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Artist-Led
Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2021
‘We Are Solitary’, installation view, Rua Red L-R: Louis Haugh, Needles, 2020, and 6.6kms south east of here, 2020; Vanessa Jones, HoMi Hand Plow, 2020, oil on canvas; photograph by Louis Haugh, courtesy the artists and Rua Red
“WE ARE SOLITARY” is possibly the best description of 2020 for
We Are Solitary EVE PARNELL DISCUSSES A RECENT GROUP EXHIBITION AT RUA RED BY NCAD MFA STUDENTS.
many people, since months of restrictions and lockdowns curtailed our interactions with the outside world and each other. This phrase was also the title of a group show at Rua Red (20 – 28 November 2020), organised by the National College of Art & Design, MFA Fine Art programme and Rua Red. The exhibition presented 12 artists, whose artworks reflect an array of approaches that characterises our cultural moment at the crux of this most unusual time in history. The exhibition includes works by Kitsch Doom, Maree Egan, Louis Haugh, Vanessa Jones, Lisa Karnauke, Ann-Marie Kirwan, James Leonard, Martyna Lebryk, Bara Palcik, Eve Parnell, Bettina Saroyan and guest Lee Welch. From the moment you walk through the first set of doors, you are met with curious sounds; large speakers stand like friendly guard dogs, big black beasts that you want to rub as you stare with them into the gallery. Curated by Lee Welch – Studio Artist in NCAD’s School of Fine Art (2020-21) – the white gallery space at Rua Red is in perfect balance. Each work is equally represented, achieving harmonious interactions between diverse styles and impulses across a spectrum of issues, from the personal to the communal. The artworks delve into the past and play with our perception of reality by creating fictional worlds that reflect the one we live in now. There are no divisions. After Lisa Karnauke’s funky loudspeakers sprawling in the hall, we glide into the light and immediately become intrigued by a large opening, high up in the wall, filled with sap green trees. This is not actually a window onto a forest, but an artwork by Louis Haugh, titled 6.6kms south east of here, which looks at aspects of colonialism and ‘alien’ tree species. Curiously, it feels like those trees are looking in and watching us. Deciding now is a good time to move to the next work, I am relieved to engage with a large painting by Lee Welch. Soft pastel colours contrast with strong architectural references. There is a flattening of forms and a sense of the Italian atmosphere, maybe from the architec-
