Critique
Visual Artists' News Sheet | March – April 2022
Sean Molloy, The Purlieu Man, oil on canvas, 90 x 120 cm; image courtesy the artist and Molesworth Gallery.
PLAYFUL TOPICS, SHARP colours and magnetic details run through a
Winter Group Show MOLESWORTH GALLERY, DUBLIN 9 DECEMBER 2021 – 28 FEBRUARY 2022
multitude of paintings in Molesworth Gallery’s Winter Group Show. One of the most striking works is Helen Blake’s Love is a Luxury, 2021. Solid colours are zig-zagged in blocks of pinks and purples, while creams and browns overlay detailed pattern that peeks through. Blake’s Awake in the Night hosts another prominent arrangement, revealing slits of bright and skinny forms. At first, it may seem this work shares properties with British artist, Bridget Riley’s geometric compositions; yet where Riley distorted perception through pattern, Blake deepens conversations between patterned forms. Leaning into more figurative work, Gabhann Dunne’s A Child’s Pride depicts a floating stag. Gestural antlers are locked into a solid mass of white. Speckled with colours, the marks’ frozen movement is somehow faster that the eye can comprehend. Dunne’s Goldcrest and Dunnock are in a far corner of the space, both moving out from each other, as if spectacular in flight. Firework feathers are small in scale and proud in tone; a playfulness is here. Probably life-size, they are perched in position. It is easy to picture them flitting around the room or flying straight out of the window, to circulate Molesworth Street’s built environment. A strong pairing of Gillian Lawler’s Edgeland III and Transition III holds firm in the space. Chequered skies are represented in both works, appearing as upside-down floors, a combination of interior and exterior realms. The compositions signify some form of a landscape, with green abstracted mountainous bases peaking a little off centre. Beams of light, almost volcanic, emerge. In Edgeland III, crisp, icy hues move upwards, while Transition III appears as a dystopian, Ballardian environment. Megan Burns’ Altered Space 0.28 and Altered Space 0.29 are hung as a pair between two windows. These sharp and angular works have a dynamic
