Past
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Paul McKinley
Blume 1 December 2020 - 6 February 2021 Kevin Kavanagh is pleased to present Blume, an exhibition of new paintings by Paul McKinley. Though very much a studio artist, Paul McKinley finds his source material outside the studio, and indeed outside of painting itself. His methods don’t change so much as they’re applied to different subjects and... Read more -
Dermot Seymour
A Covid border tangle 1 - 31 October 2020 Kevin Kavanagh is pleased to present A Covid border tangle, an exhibition of new paintings by Dermot Seymour. Due to current restrictions there will be no opening reception for this exhibition. Clearly puzzled by the artist’s priorities, a visitor to one of his exhibitions once enquired of Dermot Seymour: “Why... Read more -
Robert Armstrong
Three Distances 3 - 26 September 2020 Meet the Artist from 2 - 7pm on Thursday 03 September. Kevin Kavanagh is pleased to present Three Distances, an exhibition of paintings by Robert Armstrong. In a famous episode of the sit-com Father Ted, the eponymous Ted tries to explain perspective in Western art to his intellectually challenged colleague... Read more -
Cecilia Danell
I set a Bait for the Unknown 6 - 29 August 2020 Cecilia Danell ’s paintings are organic, magically playful and densely rich; however, they are also curiously geometric and linear, working off layers of constructed plains and improvised riffs. The artist understands the weight of colours and their manual application. She has been experimenting with different coloured grounds, underpainting the canvas... Read more -
Gemma Browne
Queen of the Dusk 9 July - 1 August 2020 Reception Thursday Jul 09 at 6.00pm This will be a public opening with social distancing Kevin Kavanagh is pleased to present Queen of the Dusk , an exhibition of new work by Gemma Browne. Queen of the dusk is a show of quite, small paintings on canvas which... Read more -
Gary Coyle
Dreaming Different Dreams 5 March - 27 June 2020 Reception Thursday 05th of March at 6pm. Dreaming Different Dreams will be extended and open to the public until June 27th. Kevin Kavanagh is pleased to present Dreaming Different Dreams, an exhibition of new work by Gary Coyle “What kind of Man am I, sitting at home, watching TV... Read more -
Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh
Teorainn 6 - 29 February 2020 Kevin Kavanagh is proud to present Teorainn, a new exhibition of paintings by Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh . Ní Mhaonaigh ’s paintings contain questions regarding the boundaries and limits of line, texture, colour and the substance of paint itself. This new series continues this inquiry, using a unique and constantly evolving... Read more -
Sean Lynch
A Murmur Repeated 9 January - 1 February 2020 Kevin Kavanagh presents A Murmur, Repeated, Sean Lynch's fourth solo exhibition at the gallery. Opening on Thursday January 9th with Sean Lynch and curator Brenda McParland in conversation at 6.15pm, followed by a reading in the gallery by award winning author Kevin Barry at 6.45pm and reception from 7-8pm.... Read more -
SILVER
25 Year Anniversary Show 20 November - 21 December 2019 To mark 25 years as a gallerist in Dublin, I have put together a special exhibition, SILVER. It is a personal selection of art works, each by an artist associated with the gallery and each, I feel, of exceptional quality. Over the years, it has been an honour and a... Read more -
Diana Copperwhite
Proto Fiction And The Sleep Of Reason 10 October - 9 November 2019 how things stand, at this very moment In Diana Copperwhite's exhibition Proto Fiction and the Sleep of Reason, her paintings appear to pulse, glow, dissolve, vibrate, radiate, to fade in and out of focus even as you look at them. Layers of scuffed, scraped and smeared colour partially obscure any... Read more -
Kathy Tynan
Green Like Now 5 - 28 September 2019 Kevin Kavanagh is proud to present Green Like Now, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Kathy Tynan opening 5pm Thursday 5th September. From Wednesday 11th to Sunday 15th September, Green Like Now will be transformed into a set for Pretty Feelings, a new play by Isadora Epstein written in... Read more -
High Day
Sean Lynch, Elaine Byrne, Mark Swords, MIck O'Dea, Richard Proffitt, AileenMurphy, Geraldine O'Neill 1 - 17 August 2019 Sean Lynch, Elaine Byrne, Mark Swords, MIck O'Dea, Richard Proffitt, AileenMurphy, Geraldine O'Neill High Day is a celebration of the accomplishments and diverse processes of a selection of gallery artists at varying stages of their careers. Incorporating a mixture of drawing, painting, sculpture, photography and collage, the exhibition hosts a... Read more -
David Quinn
Joyful Mysteries 4 - 27 July 2019 Kevin Kavanagh is proud to present Joyful Mysteries an exhibition of new paintings by David Quinn. Joyful Mysteries – Quinn’s first solo exhibition in almost 10 years, comprises a contemplative tone poem of paintings set in a world of crystalline light and detachment. As often with Quinn the point of... Read more -
Lesley-Ann O’Connell
Midnight Swim 6 - 29 June 2019 When you look at Lesley-Ann O'Connell's paintings, over time it becomes apparent that they are in flux, spatially and temporally. Nothing within them is static and instead moods drift over the canvas and furtive notions make a brisk appearance. The titles of the work refer to atmospheric vignettes that conjure... Read more -
Margaret Corcoran
An Enquiry II 9 May - 1 June 2019 Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin is proud to present An Enquiry II by Margaret Corcoran. This exhibition is part of a Production Residency at IMMA in collaboration with Kevin Kavanagh Dublin. Corcoran re-enters and elaborates on the themes from an earlier series; The Enquiry Series painted in 2002. In this earlier series,... Read more -
Sonia Shiel
How The Oyster Makes The Pearl 11 April - 4 May 2019 Kevin Kavanagh is proud to present How The Oyster Makes The Pearl, a solo show by Sonia Shiel. Sonia Shiel’s interdisciplinary practice combines key methodologies from art, law and theatre to imbue characteristics, autonomy and personal narratives in the inanimate objects and painted works that she creates. Playfully usurping the... Read more -
Michael Coleman
Still Life 14 March - 6 April 2019 Kevin Kavanagh is pleased to present MICHAEL COLEMANS STILL LIFE, an exhibition of paintings which opens Thursday 14th of March. We are delighted to be working with Michael again for the first time since his solo exhibition in 1997 at the Jo Rain Gallery in Temple Bar. Born in 1951,... Read more -
Robert Armstrong
Squeegee Paintings 7 February - 9 March 2019 “If I am forced to associate, I think of my pictures as explosive landscapes, worlds, and distances held on a flat surface”. – Helen Frankenthaler In his new paintings Robert Armstrong delights in the dripping, slipping, scraping, melding, oozing, brushing, and drying of oil paint on a heavily gessoed... Read more -
Cecilia Danell
Winter Wanderer 10 January - 2 February 2019 Cecilia Danell (b.1985) is a Swedish-born, Galway-based artist. Her current body of work is based on winter walks in the area surrounding her family farm in Sweden, where the experience of being in the landscape influences the paintings beyond the photographic source material. She walks and traces an environment that... Read more -
Alice Maher
Vox Materia 29 November - 22 December 2018 Alice Maher is one of Ireland’s most established and influential artists and yet despite the long familiarity of her work she hasn’t lost the ability to surprise and unsettle. Her art is always mutating, fresh and dynamic. This new installation, Vox Materia, continues her sustained interrogation into the aesthetic potential... Read more -
Mark Swords
Lost Highway Guy 2 - 24 November 2018 There is a song on “repeat play” in the studio. It is late. I am wallowing in my thoughts, my focus drifting between the music and my own ideas, surrounded by paintings. “…all alone and lost…” I am there, very much alone and must somehow use this time, make it... Read more -
Joe Scullion
As It Goes 4 - 27 October 2018 In As it Goes, interiors and exteriors merge, voids and forms are interchangeable and within the pictorial plane, perceptual slippages occur. Spatial boundaries assert and digress continually, creating an assemblage of fragmentary gestures that affirm a cohesive whole. These paintings celebrate dream logic and the capacity of images to describe... Read more -
Elaine Byrne
Borderline 6 - 29 September 2018 All photographic works, Hahnemuhle Fine Art Pearl 285gsm Prints framed and made using Ultra Chrome HDR pigment inks and UV protective spray. Why do nation-states desire walls? What do walls promise to secure, protect, contain or keep at bay? These are questions Elaine Byrne interrogates in her new work, borderline.... Read more -
Bounty
Diana Copperwhite & Aileen Murphy 9 August - 1 September 2018 Bounty comprises recent work by Diana Copperwhite and Aileen Murphy. The impetus to show the work side by side has arisen from the mutual admiration and affinities that exist between the two artists in their subject matter and their handling of the medium of paint. Both Copperwhite and Murphy create... Read more -
Island Life
Summer Group Exhibition 5 July 2018 Sonia Shiel, Kathy Tynan, Marcel Vidal, Mark Swords, Salvatore of Lucan, Joe Scullion, Robert Armstrong, Julia Dubsky, Lesley-Ann O’Connell, Pat Byrne, Stephen Loughman, Cecilia Danell, William O’Neill and Stephanie Deady Island Life comprises work by artists who are making and showing paintings at the moment. It is intended as a... Read more -
Mick O’Dea
Kilkenny Festival Portraits 7 - 30 June 2018 From 2015 -17 Mick O’Dea was visual artist-in-residence at Kilkenny Arts Festival. For this unique three-year project he painted daily oil portraits of leading Irish and international artists, performers, actors, musicians and writers taking part in the Festival, while also documenting performances with action sketches. An audience joined Mick in... Read more -
Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh
Achar 26 April - 26 May 2018 We again observe the complete preoccupation with paint itself, with the simple play of colours against one another. Many of the recent paintings pulled out from stacks that afternoon in Bray seemed to follow this logic, canvases filled to bursting with dragged daubs of complementary colours: swampy greens and starchy... Read more -
Vanessa Donoso Lopez
I shall change the way things are ordered 22 March - 21 April 2018 In Texture Notes , poet and performer Sawako Nakayasu writes ‘The pain of seeing something beautiful. Is layered as such, the first layer of it being thick, of substance, I can’t say which sort, but of being matter and matterful.’ Nakayasu provides us with a lexicon of sorts for Vanessa... Read more -
Paul McKinley
Elysian Fields 15 February - 16 March 2018 ‘Elysian Fields’ refers to an afterlife in Greek mythology, a place where the souls of gods and heroes as well as those associated with them would remain after death. Greece is a country dealing with mass displacement of people from war torn countries and though economically unstable, their contribution to... Read more -
Stephanie Deady
Primed Vision 11 January - 10 February 2018 Stephanie Deady works from photographs, found images and from memory to create paintings of her surroundings, both experienced and recalled. On wooden panels, the paintings depict part of Deady’s studio, the counter top in the kitchen of a friend’s house and the corner of a living room in Italy, among... Read more -
Ulrich Vogl
The nature of drifting 23 November - 23 December 2017 The Map Land lies in water; it is shadowed green. Shadows, or are they shallows, at its edges showing the line of long sea-weeded ledges where weeds hang to the simple blue from green. Or does the land lean down to lift the sea from under, drawing it unperturbed around... Read more -
Dermot Seymour
Hidden dips, Blind summits -The road to Brexitaria 19 October 2017 Read more -
Paul Nugent
Obscura 9 September - 14 October 2017 Asylum Chapel
Obscura | Paul Nugent | 14.09 – 14.10 2017
The Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital is an institution in Paris that interned and treated patients deemed mentally ill by the state from the 17th century onwards. It was known for its poor living conditions and crude experiments. The Salpetriere in its current manifestation is a university hospital. Gaining notoriety as one of Europe’s largest insane asylums during the Belle Époque, the Salpêtrière became the sight of French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot’s famous Tuesday morning lectures.
These lectures were renowned for their theatrical presentations in which Charcot’s patients performed their conditions to crowds of spectators that included important physicians and neurologists as well as wealthy members of the public.
The spectacle of such events was driven by a morbid curiosity that also spurred the circus shows, travelling magicians and hypnotists of the same era. In fact it was noted that Charcot’s lectures were attended by the famous French stage actress, Sarah Bernhardt who purportedly took inspiration form the repertoire of gestures and intensity of performance presented by patients at the Salpêtrière. (Heroes and Legends of Fin-de-Siècle
France: Gender, Politics, and National Identity, Venita Datta, 2011 Cambridge University Press, p156).
Charcot initially believed that hysteria was a neurological disorder and throughout his career he searched for the ‘seat’ of hysteria
– hoping to find a physical location for the disorder. He later concluded that hysteria was a psychological disease. Using medical apparatus and hypnosis, Charcot and his contemporaries conducted
experiments on the - almost exclusively - female patients. During this time he had a number of patients whom he favoured and in the performance of his lectures, Charcot often relied on his more ‘experienced’ patients. Namely those who understood, and were cooperative in, the theatrical nature of the events. Patients such as Louise Augustine Gleizes and Marie ‘Blanche’ Wittmann became complicit in the performance of their condition in a way that transformed them into icons of their hysteria.
In many cases, Charcot’s patients became famous in their own right; Gleizes and Wittmann for example were well known hysterics in the 19th century and became the subject of novels, newspaper articles and works of art. Jane Avril was a dancer and hysteric who became the muse of Toulouse-Lautrec. In her book, Medical Muses: Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century Paris, Asti Hustvedt details rivalries that existed between the young women who hoped to achieve fame by performing in Charcot’s lectures.
Charcot, in his search for the seat of hysteria in the female body, employed what he deemed the most up to date technology to aid his research. He believed that the forensic use of the camera would allow him to locate and distil the essence of hysteria. However as photographic technology developed, the state, hospitals, Gendarmerie and the Académie des Beaux-Arts became complicit in a fiction. Art students, physicians and doctors often worked together with favoured subjects to create the most convincing iteration of the suspected condition. The photographs became increasingly staged and ornate, blurring the already delicate line between documentation and fabrication.
In his most recent series of paintings, Paul Nugent returns to iconography as it pertains to the history and architecture of the asylum chapel. During the 19th century, Charcot relied heavily on photography to decipher and archive cases of hysteria-a disease that no longer exists despite being suspected to affect more than half of all women during the 19th century. (Medical Muses: Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century Paris, Asti Hustvedt, 2012, Bloomsbury Press).
Throughout Obscura, Nugent responds to his photographic source material and the interior of the chapel by closely observing and depicting its interior – the site of the hysteric performances. Séance IV depicts an altar presided over by a statue of the Virgin Mary in her iconic pose, head at a gentle tilt, hands loosely by her side with palms facing upwards. A large painting, of which the subject matter is undecipherable, dominates the wall space of the chapel. In the repetition of these compositions, Nugent simultaneously clarifies and obscures certain details within the chapel to consider various aspects of its architecture. Within the series Nugent also directly references phases in the development of photography as a medium, including the inversion of negatives and the uniform colour of cyanotype.
This alludes to the manner in which the Camera was invested with the belief that it could shed light on the misunderstood phenomenon of hysteria. By creating an extensive archive, Charcot and his associates at the Salpêtrière hoped to find a common physical feature or expression that would help them to identify those that suffered from the condition. George Didi – Huberman in his book Invention of Hysteria, speaks about the ‘True Retina’, an emotionless gaze that presents the patient in the most neutral and objective manner
possible through meticulous documentation of the women. The use of this new technology was believed to provide an unprecedented insight into the condition.
In Obscura III, Nugent creates a painted illusion of the photographic image –as though blurred by motion or poor exposure, a trompe l'oeil that denies its medium specificity. However in Obscura I this illusion is shattered. The spatial element of the painting and the objects within it are jarred by the application of thick bars of glossy paint in the uniform Van Dyke brown of the composition.
These seemingly impulsive marks contrast with the controlled and nuanced application of paint that form the backdrop. Similarly in Hysteria the measured manner in which the surface has been applied appears to have been compromised by a sudden agitated gesture. The gesture however, is self- reflexive.
The works in Obscura consider the role of the camera in diagnosing and treating patients at the Salpêtrière. By referencing techniques in the development of photography, and in his depiction of various angles of the asylum chapel, Nugent considers the relationship between photography and painting to imply a presence or semblance of place associated with historical and institutional environments.
-Ingrid Lyons
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Richard Proffitt
Written in Water, Shone in Stone, Lost in Light 10 August - 9 September 2017 Written in Water, Shone in Stone, Lost in Light is comprised of work in various media - installation, painting, digital collage and audio, forming a constellation of thoughts and ideas that relate to perception and awareness. Richard Proffitt is interested in the transition between personally significant events and those that... Read more -
Atonal Supersound
Kathy Tynan 6 July - 5 August 2017 Kathy Tynan’s eye for idiosyncrasies and her ability to distil an essence from daily encounters lends her paintings a profundity that is interspersed with self-reflexive humour. Each painting captures a moment in which a feeling or mood prevails. In the making of these paintings, Tynan proffers a world in which... Read more -
Diana Copperwhite
Crooked Orbit 1 June - 1 July 2017 ‘As is well known, the word ‘orbit’ refers to a set route or path around a given point: we on earth orbit the sun, just as the moon orbits us. Perhaps less known, though, is that the word is etymologically coupled with a distinct sense of the optical: from a... Read more -
Sonia Shiel
Rectangle, a written thing 4 - 27 May 2017 Rectangle, a written thing, 2017, is presented in four ensembles. These painted works conjure theatrical tropes without motion, containing performative moments within the stasis and composition of painting. Such poles of action and inaction, recurring throughout the installation, are echoed in an accompanying script. This written thing provides a space... Read more -
Margaret Corcoran
Aspasia – An Influential Immigrant 20 April - 20 May 2017 Aspasia was an influential immigrant to Classical-era Athens. She was the lover of the statesman Pericles and yet famed in her own right as an intellectual. As an outsider to the culture she entered, she thrived despite its restrictive citizenship laws. Corcoran’s large, highly colourful canvases are bold and assertive,... Read more -
Geraldine O’Neill
Many-worlds interpretation… 16 February - 18 March 2017 The subjectivity of perception provides each individual with a measure of the world; the communication of these various measures defines reality. Each one of us is like an artist, continuously creating our own personal worldview often unaware of just how subjective it is. Heraclitus believed that the world was ‘one... Read more -
Slips and Glimpses
Robert Armstrong & Anna Bjerger 17 November - 17 December 2016 Painters have a complex relationship with their source material. While it provides them with vital information and can often stimulate certain illuminating reactions within them, it can also act as a self-imposed limit, which, once introduced, must be escaped from. Slips and Glimpses, an exhibition of new work by... Read more -
Stephen Loughman
WI 13 October - 12 November 2016 Kevin Kavanagh presents WI, an exhibition of new paintings by Stephen Loughman And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England’s mountain green? And was the holy Lamb of God On England’s pleasant pastures seen? And did the countenance divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem... Read more -
Nevan Lahart
Disguise The Limit 8 September - 8 October 2016 Kevin Kavanagh is pleased to present Disguise the Limit, an exhibition of new work by Nevan Lahart. The paintings in Disguise the Limit are serenely beautiful. Lahart pictures the vast expanse of the sky; initially appearing as traditional skyscapes, this contextualisation is swiftly derailed by the inclusion of... Read more -
Ozymandias
Vogl, Scullion & McSweeney 4 August 2016 Read more -
Sean Lynch
Scrapyard Carnival 7 - 30 July 2016 Kevin Kavanagh presents Scrapyard Carnival, a new installation by Sean Lynch. As ever, Lynch’s new work evokes the role of narrative and allegory, this time spiraling out of an event in a scrapyard in Clondalkin, on the edge of Dublin City in 2011. There, a repossession company seized a BMW... Read more -
Alice Maher
The Glorious Maids of the Charnel House 2 June - 2 July 2016 Kevin Kavanagh is pleased to present The Glorious Maids of the Charnel House, an exhibition by Alice Maher. Alice Maher’s recent work represents a return to figuration with renewed passion in a series of nine large drawings. In The Glorious Maids of the Charnel House, she continues her... Read more -
Elaine Byrne
Whenceness 5 - 28 May 2016 Kevin Kavanagh is pleased to present Whenceness, an exhibition by Elaine Byrne. Whenceness is comprised of two videos, Pure Codology and Rakoczy March developed during Byrne’s fellowship at the Whitney Independent Study programme in New York, alongside twenty-four new works on paper. Collectively the work deals with the intersection between... Read more -
Michael Boran
Through the Undergrowth 7 - 30 April 2016 Kevin Kavanagh is pleased to present Through the Undergrowth , an exhibition of recent photographs by Michael Boran. Through the Undergrowth is comprised of photographs that relate to each other tangentially, their intention is ambiguous. Boran pictures towers, pylons, masts, plant stalks and monuments from a Piranesian vantage point... Read more -
Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh
Ardán 3 - 27 February 2016 Kevin Kavanagh is pleased to present Ardán , an exhibition of recent paintings by Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh. ‘Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh’s paintings capture texture, surface and form within the realm of abstract painting. Her paintings are exquisitely rich and highly charged; having developed her own distinctive language with each body of... Read more -
Hands Laid On
Kathy Tynan & Aileen Murphy 7 - 30 January 2016 In response to the question ‘why paint?’ featured in the January 2014 issue of frieze magazine, artist Ellen Altfest specified, ‘Looking over a long time is like an attempt to merge with something outside of oneself. The dense accumulation of visual information, which is the product of this kind... Read more -
Paul McKinley
Hanuman 19 November - 19 December 2015 In this exhibition of recent works Paul McKinley refers to the history and folklore of Sri Lanka to inform his paintings. Hanuman details a period of Sri Lankan history, focusing on the last days of a civil war that ended in 2009. In the grassy verges and lush thickets, guerilla... Read more -
Paul Nugent
NIGHTSHADE 8 October - 7 November 2015 Kevin Kavanagh is pleased to present NIGHTSHADE, an exhibition of new work by Paul Nugent. NIGHTSHADE is a series of paintings that present a change of direction within Nugent’s practice. In previous works he has often painted lavish interiors in which objects chime and resonate in their surroundings. They tremor... Read more -
Oliver Comerford
The Longest Road 3 September - 3 October 2015 the longest road comprises an exhibition of recent paintings by Oliver Comerford in which the open road and the surrounding landscape furnishes a meditation on points of intersection between photography, film and painting. These small-scale paintings are fundamentally autobiographical in the sense that Comerford tends only to paint places that... Read more -
Tadhg McSweeney
Pictures from the Surface 9 July - 7 August 2015 All’s well that begins well and will have no end. With an airy lightness, seemingly brittle but with underlying strength and resilience, Tadhg McSweeney’s assemblages document an exploration of the world around us – it’s various landscapes and built environments. He explores boundaries between painting, sculpture and installation with a... Read more -
Sonia Shiel
Here, while the bees are sleeping 30 April - 30 May 2015 Sonia Shiel’s highly imaginative mode of representational painting references the art historical lexicon of painting – early Flemish, romanticism, portraiture, surrealism and yet creates work that is distinctively her own style. The works are wilfully eccentric and play with the lines between truth and fiction. Her use of a multitude... Read more -
Diana Copperwhite
A Million and One Things Under the Sun 2 - 25 April 2015 'Copperwhite’s paintings follow a logic of their own, they are recycled and they grow out of one another by remaining susceptible to the materiality of paint. She often interjects with obstacles that she brings to bare on the paintings in a way that encourages them to define their autonomy. This... Read more -
Richard Proffitt
Wild Cries of Ha-Ha 8 January - 6 February 2015 Wild Cries of Ha-Ha is the translated name of one of the eight great charnel grounds described in Hindu and Buddhist spiritual texts. They are places of transformation, where the living and the dead communicate, populated by shamans, roaming spirits and corpses. These extremely sacred sites are feared and opposed... Read more -
Dermot Seymour
Fliskmahaigo 20 November - 20 December 2014 ‘Contemporary politics is the whim of man promulgated through propaganda of imagery and symbolism. In this manner society has been provided with a new gospel for the faithful that positions questioning and interrogation as part of a dissident heterodoxy. Herein we find Dermot Seymour’s current exhibition,Fliskmahaigo. Seymour’s paintings draw upon... Read more -
Margaret Corcoran
The Abundance 4 September - 4 October 2014 Kevin Kavanagh is pleased to present The Abundance by Margaret Corcoran. This exhibition features new works from her solo show Return to Cythera which was featured earlier this year at The Solstice Arts Centre, Navan. ‘Margaret Corcoran is known for her lively engagement with the western painting tradition. Her 2002... Read more -
Ruth E. Lyons
The Pinking 7 - 30 August 2014 When the sky is lit up with the pink shades of sunrise or sunset the world is awakened to the signal of day approaching or night falling. But if one had just awoken and seen the pinking of the sky they could easily be confused as to what time of... Read more -
Diana Copperwhite
Inside the Palace 6 June 2014 Read more -
Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh
Contours 1 - 23 May 2014 Speaking recently about the power of painting, the American art critic Peter Schjeldahl noted: “… there’s something irreducible about a rectangular surface covered with marks that are all absolutely on purpose and made of physical stuff like we are. When it’s good, it demands – and allows – the highest... Read more -
Mark Swords
The Hinterlands 27 March - 26 April 2014 Read more -
Ulrich Vogl
of clouds and strings 20 February - 22 March 2014 Ulrich Vogl’s most recent body of work focuses on sculptures that are – either in themselves or in their projection – films. Like in previous works Vogl uses movement, light and shadow to capture a suspension of reality and space. Among the sculptures in of clouds and strings is the... Read more -
Robert Armstrong
Assumptions 16 January - 15 February 2014 The title of Robert Armstrong’s exhibition of new paintings refers to his version of The Assumption of the Virgin, a Nicolas Poussin painting from 1650. Nonetheless, it cannot be assumed that the ascension into heaven of the Virgin Mary after her death is in any significant way the subject of... Read more -
Vanessa Donoso Lopez
A PAINFUL EXCESS OF PLEASURE 6 September 2013 Read more -
Stephen Loughman
Interiors 25 April - 25 May 2013 Stephen Loughman’s latest exhibition takes it’s title from Woody Allen’s 1978 film, “Interiors” which is considered to be heavily influenced by the work of Ingmar Bergman. Bergman’s films such as “Winter Light”, “Cries and Whispers”, “Fanny and Alexander” and “Scenes from a Marriage”, are the source for the paintings in... Read more -
Paul McKinley
Operation Turquoise 21 March - 20 April 2013 When Francisco Goya etched Yo Lo Vi across the bottom of one of the harrowing images from his Disasters of War series (1810-12), he was making a declaration about the primacy of presence in the authenticity of narrative. “I saw it”, says Goya, therefore you must accept this as truth.... Read more -
Nevan Lahart
The Most Conservative Game in Town 14 February - 23 March 2013 Lahart graduated in 2003 with an MA in Virtual Realities from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. Upcoming Shows: Gothenburg Biennial 2013, Measures of Saving the World _ Part 1< rotor > Graz, Austria., To Have and Have Not, HALLE 14 Leipzig , ACC Galerie Weimar, COEXIST, Kevin... Read more -
Elaine Byrne
RAUM 10 January - 9 February 2013 “Man’s living needs are simple. They become complicated and hypocritical only as a result of artificial stimulations – in architecture as elsewhere. Honest building can be done in wood, mud and stone, just as dishonest building can be done with alpha glass and beta aluminum” Extract from ‘Pseudo-functionlism in Modern... Read more -
Preview 2012
Stephen Loughman, Vanessa Donoso Lopez, Ulrich Vogl, Dermot Seymour, Sean Lynch, Geraldine O’Neill, Sinead Ni Mhaonaigh, Diana Copperwhite, Paul McKinley, Mick O’Dea, Gary Coyle, Oliver Comerford, Mark Swords, Margaret Corcoran, Paul Nugent, Elaine Byrne, 20 December - 6 January 2012 Read more -
New Paintings
Anna Bjerger | Oliver Comerford | Diana Copperwhite 22 November - 22 December 2012 Kevin Kavanagh is pleased to present new paintings by Anna Bjerger(SWE), Oliver Comerford(IE) and Diana Copperwhite(IE). “Anna Bjerger paints heartbreaking utopias from magazine clippings. Filled with breezy landscapes and loose limbed figures, her work evokes the summer vacation version of Matisse’s Cote d’Azur. Her pictures pit ordinary life against extraordinary... Read more -
Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh
Eatramh 18 October - 17 November 2012 We navigate spatial plains not with sight alone but through a combination of our exteroceptive senses in order to position ourselves within the known world. In keeping with this logic, we must also apply the sense of such senses to our deconstruction of introspective and/or imagined space. Within Ní Mhaoghnaigh’s... Read more -
Geraldine O’Neill
Reciprocal Space 13 September 2012 There is a humorous irony to these works which are so saturated in symbolism they cease to be about any singular narrative or at least from any one perspective. The physical canvases are themselves paradoxes, questioning their own nature within the systems they depict. The segmented layers of foreground and... Read more -
Gemma Browne
Forever Girls and Boys 5 - 28 July 2012 `I`m young as morning and fresh as dew`- Maya Angelou Forever Girls and Boys projects a world inhabited by children, ranging from middle childhood to pre-teen. Browne has previously appropriated imagery of young females from fashion magazines or imagery of dolls; for this series, the source of choice is childrenswear... Read more -
Gary Coyle
Hello Darkness 31 May 2012 “ It might be better to stop talking about the sublime completely seeing that the term has been corrupted beyond recognition by the mumbo jumbo of the high priests of art religion” Theodore Adorno. Hello Darkness has taken up where Gary Coyle last left off. Returning to familiar territory (South... Read more -
Mick O'Dea
Trouble 26 April - 26 May 2012 Read more -
Sean Lynch
Dear JJ, I read with interest 22 March - 21 April 2012 The Kevin Kavanagh Gallery presents Sean Lynch’s second solo exhibition at the gallery, consisting of five artworks involving photography, slide projection, sculpture and a freely distributed publication. A story can be told and described so many times until it begins to narrow down to a particular narrative and content. Lynch... Read more -
Margaret Corcoran
How to Spend it – Love, Time and the Universe 16 February - 17 March 2012 Read more -
Sonia Shiel
The Human Race 12 January - 11 February 2012 Sonia Shiel’s installations, often composed of paintings, sculpture and video, explore the propensity of Art to be effective in the real world, while pitching mankind’s most earnest endeavours against their odd. For her first solo show at the Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Shiel will present The Human Race as a contest... Read more -
Diana Copperwhite
An Island from the Day Before 6 October - 10 November 2011 “Copperwhite’s work focuses on how the human psyche processes information, and looks at the mechanisms of how we formulate what is real. With her work, she is fully aware that such realities may only hold validity for an instant, and that we are constantly processing and changing what we logically... Read more