Past
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Margaret Corcoran
Goddesses & Icons 27 April - 20 May 2023 Kevin Kavanagh presents Goddesses & Icons - a new solo show of paintings by Margaret Corcoran running from 27 April to 20 May 2023. The works are joyous and beautifully colourful depicting iconic creatives and mythological females. Both Corcoran’s watercolours and oils are delightfully jewel-like in quality transporting the viewer... Read more -
Robert Armstrong
After mountains, more mountains 30 March - 22 April 2023 Robert Armstrong | After mountains, more mountains | Text by Aidan Dunne For a certain kind of painter, painting is a process. Of course, making a painting is necessarily a process, usually one that delivers a finished work. But for some, perhaps many painters, the finished work is less a... Read more -
Gemma Browne
Wallflowers 2 - 25 March 2023 Gemma Browne | Wallflowers | 02 – 25 March 2023 Text written by Sinéad Gleeson As the world ground to a halt in 2020, artist Gemma Browne was determined to keep moving. In an effort to stick to routines – and bound by a 2km limit – she walked the... Read more -
Elaine Byrne
Common Work 2 - 25 February 2023 Elaine Byrne | Common Work | 2 – 25th February 2023 Text by Kari Conte, Independent curator Common Work assembles a series of videos, photographs, and sculptures and a performance developed from Elaine Byrne’s nearly decade-long Arctic research, particularly in Svalbard. It materializes her fieldwork in this most northern inhabitable... Read more -
Eleanor McCaughey
Forget your cares, sow your wild oats, sin is a wonderful disease 5 - 28 January 2023 Text written by Saša Bogojev No matter the intensity or the timing, a moment of deliverance carries a lot of weight and significance. And for Eleanor McCaughey, it was such multiple experiences that conditioned the body of work she’s presenting at Kevin Kavanagh Gallery in Dublin from 5 th until... Read more -
ÖVERGÅNG
Robert Armstrong Anna Bjerger Petra Lindholm Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh Bella Rune Kathy Tynan 1 - 22 December 2022 The gallery is pleased to present Övergäng, featuring something old and something new by Robert Armstrong, Anna Bjerger, Petra Lindholm, Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh, Bella Rune and Kathy Tynan. Originally programmed for June 2020, the exhibition has been postponed twice due to the Global Pandemic. The initial concept has developed from... Read more -
Richard Proffitt | Online exhibition
to a wasted shimmer, lasting state | Online exhibition 18 November - 17 December 2022 Richard Proffitt | to a wasted shimmer, lasting state | 18th November - 17th December 2022 The spectral warping of paint in these works on paper creates shapes and timbres that barely function as descriptors and instead drift in and out of clarity, with flourishes that perforate soft layers of ambiguous background scenery.... Read more -
Stephanie Deady
Measure for Measure 3 - 26 November 2022 Text written by Aidan Dunne Historically, in western painting, there is an art of drama and spectacle, and there is an art of quietness. The extrovert and the introvert. Stirring, dramatic events and moments of inner revelation. Stephanie Deady’s work is aligned with the latter, with interior life. As... Read more -
Olivia O'Dwyer | Online exhibition
A Mind's Eye 18 October - 13 November 2022 A Mind's Eye Olivia O’Dwyer paints with a blend of imagination, memory, instinct, and insight, drawing on ordinary experiences that have imprinted in her mind as extraordinary or distinct in some way. Intimations of intimacy combined with a Bad Painting* style mean these new, small canvases are sometimes funny, sometimes... Read more -
Vanessa Donoso Lopez
movements of immobile objects 6 - 29 October 2022 Text written by Cliodhna Shaffrey It’s simple isn’t it, to pick up stones? Take clumps of soil out of the earth, stand on land or in landscape, kneel, haunch low or sit and press a hand down, digging, digging into earth and pick up stones. Humans have collected stones for... Read more -
Sheila Rennick | Online Exhibition
Neon Orchids 20 September - 16 October 2022 SHEILA RENNICK | NEON ORCHIDS Sheila Rennick’s images are rooted in the context and culture they reference, so despite hints of satire and caricature there is a familiarity of these realities and worlds. In a series of drawings, with neon inks and gestural marks, Rennick’s cacophony of references include aspirational... Read more -
Cecilia Danell
Brush Lightly Through Fireweed Forests 8 September - 1 October 2022 Cecilia Danell's exhibition Brush Lightly Through Fireweed Forests encompasses large, hand-tufted rugs and paintings inspired by her own encounters with the landscape of the area in Sweden where she grew up. In her process based practice, research into landscape and the psychology of place is coupled with a strong interest... Read more -
David Tully
THE ROCK 18 August - 3 September 2022 Read more -
Lesley-Ann O'Connell
Yellow, Pink and Blue Horizon 21 July - 13 August 2022 Dreamboat A text inspired by the paintings of Lesley-Ann O'Connell by Barry Kehoe There are three colours that are ever present in the palette choice of Lesley-Ann O'Connell. Cerulean Blue, Magenta and Cadmium Yellow. Each colour has its own set of particular characteristics and in her work they form... Read more -
Kathy Tynan
Soft Fascination 23 June - 16 July 2022 Text written by Benjamin Stafford Heart of a Dog (with apologies to Laurie Anderson) I love her. And I know she loves me too. There are others of course, there always are – some of them are around so often! - but it doesn’t worry me. We have been through... Read more -
Geraldine O'Neill
Solastalgia 26 May - 18 June 2022 Text by Angela Griffith The term solastalgia is a hybrid of the words ‘solace’ and ‘nostalgia’ and was coined by Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht. Albrecht sought to recognise and encapsulate how current changes in the world’s ecosystem impacts on people’s physical and mental wellbeing, namely the distress felt as... Read more -
Elaine Byrne | Online exhibition
Othered 12 May - 11 June 2022 The title of this collection of unique edition photographs points to the photographs altered, or Othered, state. Each photograph has been manipulated by hand after the image has been printed making each unique and not reproducible. This approach is derived from a concept common in printing – that of the... Read more -
William O'Neill
Luminous Gatherings 28 April - 21 May 2022 Text by Ingrid Lyons ‘Not everything is as it seems, and not everything that seems is. Between being and seeming there is always a point of agreement, as if being and seeming were two inclined planes that converge and become one’. ― José Saramago, Blindness (1995) In Luminous Gatherings, William... Read more -
Salvatore of Lucan
Dead Present 31 March - 23 April 2022 'Hello, I'm Salvatore of Lucan and I am 28 years old now. 'Dead Present' is a show which starts on the left with me in work and goes right across to me as a blemmyae. There's me in the pub too and then me eating a takeaway afterwards. Then me... Read more -
Aileen Murphy
WET TALK 3 - 26 March 2022 Text written by Amelia Groom Antonio Banderas says that he didn’t speak any English when he was cast in his first English-language role, so he learned his lines phonetically. I thought about this when I came across a news article about some wild parrots in Sydney who had picked up... Read more -
SINÉAD NÍ MHAONAIGH
Struchtúr 3 - 26 February 2022 Notes On Structure | Written by Joanne Laws Within the vernacular of Irish architecture, these angular painted forms seem strangely familiar yet irredeemably distant. Gable silhouettes and steeply pitched roofs recall back-to-back suburban terraces, just as a ramshackle lean-tos and modular off-shoots channel the utility of country life. Neither formal... Read more -
Michael Lyons
The Age of Plastic 6 - 29 January 2022 Text written by Ingrid Lyons The Age of Plastic is an exhibition of new works made primarily during the last two years, as a response to the heightened and persistent media exposure that we have undergone. Whether to keep each other safe and follow announcements regarding the global pandemic, or... Read more -
Michael Coleman
"Works that have made an impression on me" 2 - 23 December 2021 More orange than pink I first encountered Michael Coleman’s paintings in the summer of 1989 when I worked as an EFL teacher in the grandly titled Academy of English Studies. Michael had his studio on the top floor and was manning the reception desk while his enormous monochrome paintings adorned... Read more -
Ella de Burca | Online Exhibition
Wolfroy Goes to Town, 18 November - 18 December 2021 ELLA DE BURCA WOLFROY GOES TO TOWN, Ella has created a series of images from watercolour, eggshells and pulverised petals. The images serve as devotions to the flowers growing in her garden. Ella's research into their medicinal healing properties overlaps with her research into the mystical properties of viewer interpretation.... Read more -
Diana Copperwhite
Vanishing Apertures 4 - 27 November 2021 On Blurring Text written by Sue Rainsford Aperture: an opening which allows for the passage of light. As it widens and narrows inside a camera lens or human eye, rays scatter thin as mist or gather thickly in a luminous cone. Expansion, recession. In the movement between them, blinking discrepancies... Read more -
Simon Watson
Portrait of a House 14 - 30 October 2021 In Portrait of a House, Watson explores an eighteenth-century Georgian house on Dublin’s storied Henrietta Street. The house has a history of transformation, from the grand city home of wealthy merchants to the inner-city tenement dwelling for the poverty stricken. In a gentle Proustian fashion, the house reveals a quiet... Read more -
Gemma Browne | Online Exhibition
Lady-Salad Days 30 September - 31 October 2021 Lady-Salad Days The experience of artist as mother and the invisibility that comes with this changing role informs some of the impetus of the work alongside more universal feminist themes. While the domestic space has seen renewed focus in recent times due to lockdown, the feeling of being locked... Read more -
Ulrich Vogl
Two Stars Missing 16 September - 9 October 2021 The starting point of Ulrich Vogl’s work is his fascination with everyday objects and places, their stories and moods. He either integrates them unchanged, reshapes them, or leaves them only as references. These objects are always part of a playful, experimental and conceptual process, at the end of which the... Read more -
Richard Proffitt
A Memory Circular 19 August - 11 September 2021 Richard Proffitt’s practice may best be described as evincing a preoccupation with the interspersal of the esoteric, the phenomenological and the darkly fantastical amid the everyday, and often unremarkable, artifacts of childhood and adolescent experience. We observe the conflict, and ultimate coalescence, of these extremities as they are represented in... Read more -
Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh | Online Exhibition
Dúil 3 - 28 August 2021 Text by Niall MacMonagle Ní Mhaonaigh has always celebrated form and colour and she masters both in these recent works with characteristic energy and control. Here, in these oil on board paintings, Ní Mhaonaigh has taken her brush for a walk. The palette draws on her familiar, signature one: pale... Read more -
Stephen Loughman
three years later 15 July - 14 August 2021 Falling towers Jerusalem Athens Alexandria Vienna London Unreal -T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922 In the wake of 9/11 there abounded a profusion of conspiracy theories, almost all of which were predicated on the assertion that the Bush administration were involved in, or had advance knowledge of, the attacks.... Read more -
Sonia Shiel
THE DANGERS OF HAPPY 10 June - 10 July 2021 THE DANGERS OF HAPPY Sonia Shiel's paintings for The Dangers Of Happy depict the simplest of human endeavours - an adult climbs a tree with a child, neighbours navigate a large object between houses, somebody is arranging flowers. Fragility lurks in the urchin grey shapes, bare limbs, and uncanny translucencies... Read more -
Sheila Rennick
Screaming on Mute 6 May - 5 June 2021 Kevin Kavanagh is pleased to present Screaming on Mute, an exhibition of new paintings by Sheila Rennick. Sheila Rennick’s paintings are curiously at home in a world of angry Brexit voters, Trump-supporting conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxers and climate change deniers. Curiously because they do not directly address any such people, they... Read more -
Kathy Tynan | Online Exhibition
Fresh Ruins 6 - 19 April 2021 Fresh Ruins: Text by Ingrid Lyons Kathy's paintings document her day-to-day life and thoughts; capturing vignettes that are part of her daily routine; moments from the quotidian that somehow sparkle with a truth of their own. Barely tangible, they are encouraged out through the medium of paint. This has been... Read more -
Robert Armstrong | Online Exhibition
Covideos & Covid Paintings 9 - 22 March 2021 During the COVID_19 Lockdowns Robert Armstrong made a series of short videos which he called Covideos. They were shot in his home in Henrietta Street, Dublin and surrounding area. They range from 1 to 4 minutes in duration and 20 of them were posted on Instagram and YouTube . Kevin... Read more -
Carlos Pesudo | Online Exhibition
Zero Space 13 February - 6 March 2021 This exhibition, which presents painting and video work, has as its interest in what happens in the most immediate and hermetic reality of the creation space. Carlos Pesudo uses the figure of the egg or 'zero space' as a metaphor for the isolation in which he finds himself in his... Read more -
Paul McKinley
Blume 1 December 2020 - 9 January 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 -
Margaret Corcoran | Online Exhibition
Noli timere – do not be afraid 17 September - 17 October 2020 'These words, Noli Timere, texted from our poet Seamus Heaney to his wife before he died - has been a gift and comfort to me and also to the nation and the world. I found myself supported by these words on my own mothers passing in December - and again... 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 -
Richard Proffitt | ONLINE EXHIBITION
EVERY LEAF WAS TURNING 24 June - 14 July 2020 Read more -
DIANA COPPERWHITE | ONLINE EXHIBITION
LOCKDOWN SERIES 3 - 17 June 2020 For our third online exhibition, we focus on Diana Copperewhite, like most artists the lockdown presented an opportunity for reflection on their practice and a break from the hustle and bustle of one’s daily life. More walking on the quiet streets of Dublin and though the empty parks early in... Read more -
CECILIA DANELL | ONLINE EXHIBITION
LOCKDOWN SERIES – NOTEBOOK 20 May - 2 June 2020 Read more -
VANESSA DONOSO LOPEZ | Online Exhibition
I WANNA BE A MANUPORT 5 - 19 May 2020 ‘AS THE OLDEST AND WISEST OF ALL LIFE FORMS, THEN, ROCKS ARE TO BE DEEPLY RESPECTED AS A CATEGORY BUT ESPECIALLY AS PERSONS. THEY ARE THE SOURCE OF ALL LIFE ON THE PLANET, AND THEY CONTINUE TO GENEROUSLY GIVE THEMSELVES FOR MAINTAINING ALL LIFE’ George Tinker This situation took us... 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