Clúdach: Cover

The covers of New Hibernia Review's sixteenth volume feature art created at the Belfast Print Workshop, one of the key institutions in the art scene of Northern Ireland going back to 1977. This issue presents a work by James Allen, an artist who has been closely associated with the Workshop since its earliest years.

Allen's "Roofs of the City," measures 13 cm x 20 cm. This playful, gestural composition strongly suggests the movement of a cityscape—even though the image shows none of the city's occupants, and declines to employ color. Foregrounding nondescript buildings, Allen's etching reverses our visual expectations by crowding the distant space with a dense line that includes many of Belfast's landmark buildings.

Allen was born in Lurgan, County Armagh, in 1941, and studied at the Belfast College of Art and at Brighton College of Art. After teaching in London for a decade, he returned to Belfast to become printmaker in residence at the Workshop from 1977 to 1980, followed by a two-year term as the full-time manager of the organization. Allen's work is held in numerous public and private collections in Ireland and elsewhere, including the collections of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the Ulster Museum, An Chomhairle Ealaíon, Dublin, and the National Self-Portrait Collection at the University of Limerick. Best known as a printmaker, Allen is also an accomplished painter. He lives in Belfast.

The Belfast Print Workshop moved to its present site in the city's Cathedral Quarter in 2003, and is the largest space in Northern Ireland for professional printmaking. We thank the artist, as well as the staff of the Belfast Print Workshop and especially Alice Dixon, for kind assistance in providing this image.

[View Cover Image]