The Isle of Man Steam Packet Company is lending its support to the Sayle Gallery as it prepares to stage an exhibition of Joseph Urie’s work.

The exhibition, Phantasmagoria, will be a rare opportunity to see a retrospective of prints and paintings by a contemporary figurative expressionist, whose work is held in several significant national and private collections.

The Steam Packet Company is providing free transport of the works from the UK for the exhibition, which runs from 10th April until 3rd May at the gallery in the Villa Marina Colonnade, Douglas.

The artist, who attended the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee and the prestigious Royal Academy in London, will be in the Isle of Man during the exhibition period for his annual bicycle tour of the countryside. Urie spent time in the Island as a young man and comes back every year seeking fresh inspiration from the Manx landscape.

He will also meet students from the Isle of Man College during a seminar at the Sayle Gallery on 24th April.

Urie’s work is seen as a combination of a highly emotive and at times primitive style with a heavy use of symbolism, creating an uneasy atmosphere which plays on the viewer’s apprehension of a conflict between perception and understanding. The exhibition, Phantasmagoria, is described as a body of work that resides in the uneasy liminal spaces between the human and the non-human, the real and the unreal, the perceived and the imagined.

Damian Ciappelli, Chairman of the Sayle Gallery, said: ‘The Sayle Gallery is pleased to bring this important contemporary British artist's work to a Manx audience. The ability to put on such an exhibition depends upon having a well-resourced gallery and we are grateful for the continued support of the Isle of Man Arts Council and the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company.’

Steam Packet Company Chief Executive Mark Woodward added: ‘It was a pleasure to lend our support to the Sayle Gallery’s recent Embers exhibition, and I’m pleased we have been able to help make another collection of artworks available for the Manx public to view. We are told this is a rare opportunity to see these paintings and prints, so I hope people make sure they visit the gallery.’

Photo - Joseph Urie - The Bird Man.