Smashing Times Virtual Arts Centre

Welcome to the Smashing Times Virtual Arts Centre, a space where creativity, courage and resilience speak to us through the voices of artists, citizens and all those standing up for the dignity and rights of others. A cultural experience that everybody can enter and enjoy.

Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality welcome you to our virtual home for the arts and human rights – an arts centre with a series of online galleries featuring visual art, digital and performing art exhibitions. The centre is a unique and innovative gallery, museum and performance space and a digital platform providing a resource and advice service to promote information, guidance and advice on the arts for equality, human rights and diversity.

The Smashing Times Virtual Arts Centre has the following layout.

Venue Map

The Smashing Times virtual arts centre displays artworks from a range of arts disciplines, all promoting the arts for human rights. Enjoy visual arts, digital arts, photography, tapestry, film, audio, literature, poetry and performing arts including theatre, dance and music, all aimed at the promotion of equality, human rights and diversity.

We present a variety of powerful visual images, installations, performing art works and artists’ statements created by artists from around the world. They have achieved artistic excellence, professional accomplishments and a body of work that has a positive impact on viewers.

Gallery One: Festival Gallery

This is a gallery space for the Dublin Arts and Human Rights Festival. This space contains information on what the festival is about, the history of the festival and information on the current festival programme which takes place in October each year for ten days.

Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality and Front Line Defenders, in partnership with Amnesty International, Fighting Words, Irish Council for Civil Liberties, National Women’s Council of Ireland, Trócaire, and Poetry Ireland, present the annual Dublin Arts and Human Rights Festival showcasing and highlighting the extraordinary work of human rights defenders in Ireland and around the world, past and present, and the role of the arts and artists in promoting human rights today.

Gallery Two: Arts and Human Rights Gallery – The Art of Rights

The Smashing Times Arts and Human Rights Gallery is a permanent collection that will be added to each year. We are honoured to feature work by a range of artists from across Ireland and internationally, showcasing artworks related to themes of equality, human rights and diversity. If you wish to donate an artwork for consideration for display in the gallery, please contact info@smashingtimes.ie for further information.

Gallery Three: Sinners and Citizens

This virtual exhibition features artworks created by artists who have worked with Smashing Times and by artists who are taking part in State of the Art: The Nation State as both Violator and Protector of Human Rights, a project implemented by Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality and supported by the Arts Council. ‘Sinners and Citizens’ is taken from a quote from Seamus Heaney:

“As writers and readers, as sinners and citizens, our realism and our aesthetic sense make us wary of crediting the positive note. The very gunfire braces us and the atrocious confers a worth upon the effort which it calls forth to confront it.”

Smashing Times are dedicated to supporting artists to engage in creative practice and research on national and international best practice examples of arts and human rights from across Europe, linked to sociological and anthropological standpoints and a study of ‘art as activism’ from the personal to the political.

The artworks are inspired by the theme State of the Art: The Nation State as both Violator and Protector of Human Rights and by the UN Declaration of Human Rights, intersecting with equality, human rights and diversity and created under the framework of ‘Art as a Place of Performative Remembrance’ and ‘Art as Activism and Transformation’.

Gallery Four: Art Nomads Gallery

This gallery is dedicated to showcasing the work of Art Nomads, a collective of culturally diverse artists living in Ireland; each with their own individual art practice and with the initial impetus to exhibit together. Art Nomads artists and active members are: Laragh Pittman, Antonio D’Souza, Joe Odiboh, Muhammad Achour, Roxana Manouchehri, Rajinder Singh, Amna Walayat, Hina Khan, Tomasz Madajczak, Kuasha Raihan and Insaf Yalçinkaya.

Gallery Five: Smashing Times Arts and Peace Gallery – The Art of Peace

Smashing Times are creating a virtual arts gallery space in order to display multi-disciplinary art exhibitions online celebrating peace and reconciliation on the island of Ireland and internationally.

Framed by the Peace Process in Northern Ireland and peace building actions further afield, this gallery will feature artworks from artists working in a range of disciplines. Artworks will tell stories of fragmented histories, contested borders and actions of self-reflection and reaching out in the face of adversity and love. The gallery will look at ways to express multiple stories, acts of resistance interacting with non-violent manifestations and joy and hope for the future, enabling the telling of stories from the past that continue to resonate into the future as we shape a new present promoting equity and peace for all. The burning question is how to build a world promoting creative connections where all people are treated with dignity and respect.

This gallery currently holds an exhibition from the Bogside Artists, the sole creators of the world-famous People’s Gallery® in the Bogside area of Derry in the North of Ireland. The twelve large scale murals are a main visitor attraction in the city. For the artists themselves they are socialist in essence and transcend all sectarian and ideological conflicts that have afflicted the province since 1968. They are a human document.

Gallery Six: Smashing Times Resource and Advice Service

The Smashing Times Resource and Advice Service is implemented by Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality and consists of the following elements

• European Arts and Human Rights Network
• Artist Professional Development Programme
• European Resource and Advice Service on the Arts for Equality, Human Rights and Diversity – Multi-Media space providing information, resources and services
• Creative Arts for Health and Well-Being Hub
• European Arts and Human Rights E-Learning and Training Space

As part of its resource and advice service, Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality want to provide support and information to all interested in using the arts to promote equality, human rights and diversity. The company are currently working on a digital arts platform to host the above services and If you wish to receive regular updates, please join the Smashing Times mailing list.

Smashing Times Design

The Smashing Times Virtual Arts Centre was created from a vision by curator Mary Moynihan and designed by Paul Marshall in association with the Smashing Times team. All structures within the design of the centre were carefully selected to reflect elements of the island of Ireland. The trees are the Irish Oak, Rowan and Ash trees. The large stone in the garden contains Ogham script for the words Smashing Times. Within this virtual world, Smashing Times have created a space that is founded on the deep-rooted culture of arts in Ireland, while being open and inviting to audiences from across the world. The indoor space is designed as a series of octagonal rooms, joined together to create a free-flowing gallery or artworks accessible to all.

The Smashing Times Virtual Arts Centre is a curated art resource and initiative of Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality. It is a growing resource for art buyers, gallery directors, curators, art consultants, healthcare program directors and the general public seeking to exhibit and/or purchase art that promotes equality for all.

Important Notice: The copyright to all original artwork shown on the Smashing Times website or gallery belongs to each artist. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce images without the written consent of the artist. Smashing Times reserve the right to display the artwork online.