Raising the bar with a new art exhibition
Ken Sweeney
Some landmark Dublin pubs feature in the 'Dublin Life' exhibition by artist Chris McMorrow
An artist is celebrating some of Dublin's leading watering holes.
The International Bar, McDaids, Kehoe's, The Stag's Head, Toner's and O'Donoghue's are just some of the pubs featured in 'Dublin Life', an exhibition by Chris McMorrow.
"Everyone seems to have a favourite pub in Dublin. I've always been fascinated by the light coming from them and the people you meet in them," Mr McMorrow said.
The artist, from Whitehall in Dublin, met his own wife Noeleen in the Palace Bar over 20 years ago, and he has lovingly captured the famous pub in a warm orange light in his new show.
The Palace is one of a handful of landmark bars that escaped being turned into a super pub.
"These superpubs have bouncers on the door and inside TVs everywhere," Mr McMorrow said. "The classic pubs I've painted have never needed TVs because the people who drank in them were their own entertainment.
"Places like Grogan's where you could literally bump into anyone."
That includes actors Rachel McAdams and Michael Sheen, who Mr McMorrow and his wife met in Grogan's two months ago.
"We ended up sitting at the same table as them. It was only when Michael mentioned he was off to the Baftas the following night that I realised he was the actor who played Brian Clough in the film 'The Damned United', but there we both were having a pint in Grogan's," he revealed.
Irish Independent
