Andrea Bianconi and Barbara Davis have worked together for fourteen of the seventeen years he has been exhibiting. 

His most recent performance Il sogno canta su una corda sola [The Dream Sings on a Single Wire] created “grapevines” by connecting women using a “corded phone” to pass a poem along the along a symbolic route on the Canals of Milan. In honor of both World Poetry Day and the birthday of Alda Merini (a favorite poet of the artist), the project inaugurated the Casa delle Arti – Spazio Alda Merini [House of Arts – Alda Merini Space] at the invitation of Cetec, and with the artistic collaboration of Donatella Massimilla. In collaborating with Casa Testori, the project also paid homage to another poet important to the Milanese, Giovanni Testori.

Twenty one women took turns reciting the titles of ninty Alda Merini poems. The artist chose these titles because, when strung together, created a poem of their own. This free, “on the road” performance was by and for women in the performing arts, ex-detainees and citizens alike.
 
“Women who restore voice and memory, not only to the Poet, but to all who have been loved, lost and never forgotten, voices that help these women to rediscover themselves. Nostalgia and desire, lines of poetry appear as seeds of rebirth now as never before, when we are so strongly missing theatre, art, culture and beauty”, declares Donatella Massimilla.

“The dream sings on a single wire”
 
I am a furious little bee
  my poetry is eager as fire
  A harmony sounds in my veins
  I tried to cry with my hands
  Those like me 
  I open my cigarette
  You could at least call me
 I don’t want to forget love
  Unrepeatable love
  Yesterday evening it was love
 You were the truth, my border
  I came to you with the veil of my flesh
  I offered you my body
  O poetry, don’t come to blows with me
 I used to be a bird
 When the sky kissed the earth
 If you don’t come here
 The patient goats nibble the grass
  Desire for love
 The song of the bridegroom
 I advise all young people
  I wish I hadn’t hoped in you
 Thus gentle Proserpine
 I was born on the 21st in springtime 
 On the slender, rich grains
And always weeps at night
  Perhaps it is her prayer

Gallurese, acrylic on canvas, 2018, 102x76cms

​This exhibition, entitled Vision X, aims to bring together previously unseen works by new emerging Irish artists Aileen Murphy, Glenn Fitzgerald, Eleanor McCaughey and Brian Harte among others with more established international artists Thomas Noskowski, Joyce Pensato, Danny Rolph and Norbert Schwontkowski. The exhibition focuses on work that teeters on the edge of perception, dreamlike, sometimes awkward abstraction and subversive figuration that take the way we see apart and question our place in the world.

Vision X at RHA
​About the Royal Hibernian Academy 
About Danny Rolph

Danny Rolph Winner
of THE 2020 MARK ROTHKO MEMORIAL TRUST AWARD​

​
Barbara Davis Gallery is pleased to congratulate Danny Rolph 
for being selected as one of 2 British artists awarded with
the 2020 Mark Rothko Memorial Trust.
 
The Mark Rothko Memorial Trust announced the re-launch of
their artist award initiative that began in 1973. Beginning in 2018,
the newly launched format of the award, is an artist-in-residence
​in partnership with the Mark Rothko Art Centre in Daugavpils, Latvia.

Mark Rothko had a deep affection for Britain ever since his first trip in 1959 when he visited his friend, the artist William Scott, in Cornwall, who introduced him to other artists working in St Ives.  Two years later Bryan Robertson mounted a retrospective of his work at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London. Since that time, it was often said that of all the artists of the New York School it was Rothko to whom the British and particularly British artists responded most warmly.
 
Shortly after Mark Rothko’s tragic death in 1970 Bryan Robertson gathered together those artists who had known Rothko and held him in high regard proposing that something should be done to honor his life and work. As a result, the Mark Rothko Memorial Trust was established as a registered charity with the purpose to facilitate travel bursaries for artists working in the UK to make their first trip to the USA. Funds were raised largely from the sale of a special portfolio comprising limited edition prints made by these British artists.


 
For more info about the Artist and The Mark Rothko Memorial Trust visit:
www.markrothkomemorialtrust.org
DANNY ROLPH / BARBARA DAVIS GALLERY
 
 
 

Anton Ginzburg's exhibit Construction Proxy was featured on Glasstire. ​Read the article here!