70 / 92
8
Municipal Gallery, Cork, the Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, the
Ulster Museum and the Albrecht Durer House, Nuremberg. Major
survey exhibitions of his work have taken place in Lund, Warsaw,
Moscow, and Sofia. In 2006 a career retrospective was staged in
the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin. As a graphic designer, he has
produced book covers, posters, limited edition prints, 66 stamps for
the Irish postal service and the last Irish bank notes produced by the
Central Bank of Ireland.
In 1985 he was commissioned by the Gate Theatre, Dublin to design
Barry McGovern’s acclaimed one man Beckett piece “I’ll Go On”, and
since then he has designed many successful theatrical shows, including
Steven Berkoff’s version of Oscar Wilde’s “Salome”, Samuel Beckett's
“Endgame”, both at the Gate Theatre, the imagery and set design for
the dance phenomenon “Riverdance”, and the staging for the opening
ceremony of the Special Olympics in Croke Park.
Robert Ballagh has been an active campaigner for artists’ rights.
He was the founding Chairperson of the Association of Artists in
Ireland, and in 1983 he was elected to the international executive of
the International Association of Artists, a unesco affiliate of over
80 countries. For 3 years, he served as treasurer to that organisation.
In 1991 Robert Ballagh was elected chairperson of the national
organising committee for the celebration of the 75
th
anniversary of
the 1916 rising. For 10 years, he chaired the national executive of the
Irish National Congress, a non-party political organisation, working
for peace, unity and justice in Ireland. He is currently president of
the Ireland Institute, a centre for historical and cultural studies, and
in 2000, he was one of the founders of 'Le Chéile' – artists against
racism. He is a member of Aosdána, a self-governing trust of Irelands’
most distinguished artists, and is a fellow of the World Academy of
Art and Science.
Robert Ballagh
has been awarded an honorary doctorate in
philosophy by the Dublin Institute of Technology and an honorary
doctorate of literature by University College Dublin.