Exhibition Roundup

Dublin

BelfastDouglas Hyde Gallery The Douglas Hyde presented the Irish premiere of Arthur Jafa’s seminal work Love is the Message, The Message is Death. Jafa presents a poignant, visceral, and emotional reflection on African American life, identity, and history. Material largely taken from online sources, scenes of trauma, racism, and grief, such as routine police violence against Black people that is endemic to U.S. history, is presented alongside images of joy, defiance, and creativity. On display from 8 October to 6 November.

thedouglashyde.ie

Green on Red Green On Red Gallery presented Damien Flood’s exhibition ‘Dig’, in its Spencer Dock gallery, comprising new paintings, ceramics, and a new limited edition vinyl. Flood continues to make paintings and ceramic works that are seen separately and, in the case of Hanging Garden (2022), where one medium seems to grow out of or is enmeshed with the other. On display from 20 October to 27 November.

greenonredgallery.com

MART Gallery The MART Gallery presented ‘Mutators’, a solo exhibition by Kevin Mooney, in partnership with Sample Studios Cork and supported by The Arts Council of Ireland. Mooney is a Cork-based artist and member of Sample Studios. His work considers the voids which mark Irish visual culture, particularly related to Irish diasporic traditions and journeys. His paintings are inventions, tall stories which present as artefacts from a lost culture, and sometimes speculative imaginings of an alternative art history. On display from 1 to 21 October. mart.ie

Pallas Projects/Studios Pallas Projects/Studios presented the transmedia installation ‘Interregnum’ by Rocío Romero Grau. Influenced by Bauman’s conceptualisation of a ‘Liquid Modernity’, Rocío interrogates our present as a liminal space, an interregnum between an unreliable past and an uncertain future. This liminal space has been mostly shown as an empty, desolated, non-place, but it could potentially be a vivid space of collision and chaos; the battlefield where the antagonistic meet. On display from 13 to 29 October.

pallasprojects.org

RDS The RDS Visual Art Awards were held in the RDS Concert Hall, Ballsbridge, from 21 to 29 October. 13 graduate artists were exhibited after making it through a very selective two-round process out of 109 artists who were longlisted. Each of the 13 artists has a chance to receive: The RDS Taylor Art Award (€10,000); R.C. Lewis-Crosby Award (€5,000); RDS Members’ Arts Fund Award (€5,000); RHA Graduate Studio Award (€7,500 value); and finally the RDS Mason Hayes & Curran LLP Culturel Irlandais Residency Award, in Paris (€6,000 value). rds.ie

SO Fine Art Editions ‘Thin places of escape and return’ featured colour etchings, monoprint and collage by Niamh Flanagan, and was the first major solo exhibition of her work since ‘An Elsewhere Place’ in 2012. The motif of the house or dwelling space is central to Flanagan’s work, calling into question the notion of the house as a formative psychological structure, one that inhabits our dreams and our inner spaces, while also providing a physical barrier between the inside world and the outside. On display from 8 to 29 October.

sofinearteditions.com

Arthur Jafa, Love is the Message, The Message is Death, 2016, video still; ©Arthur Jafa, courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery.

Belfast

ArtisAnn Gallery ‘Time to Process’ was a joint exhibition by Gail Ritchie and Jennifer Trouton RUA. Though “time to process” is ostensibly a simple phrase, it can, like the works of both these artists, be interpreted in different and more complex ways. It has more than one meaning. Just as time need not be linear, nor process refer to a method or means of conducting an activity, so the works in this exhibition connect through commonality of approach. On display from 5 to 29 October.

artisann.org

Belfast Exposed Mairéad McClean’s exhibition ‘HERE’ comments on the tension and anxiety felt by those living in Northern Ireland in the 1970s during “an explosive period of conflict and political unrest”; a time when the pressures of danger and threat – both invisible and visible – permeated everyday life. McClean’s work unfolds the complexity of this experience through her memories. ‘HERE’ asks us to think about how politics and culture of a region are defined and how they define those who live here. On display from 6 October to 23 December.

belfastexposed.org

Platform Arts ‘Hot glue’ was an exhibition of newly commissioned work by materialists Sophie Gough and Daire O’Shea, curated by Sara Muthi. The German word Materialgerechtigkeit loosely translates to ‘material justice’. This principle holds that any material should be used where it is most appropriate and that its nature should not be hidden. ‘Hot glue’ maintains that sculpture cannot be exhausted by perceptive experience nor reduced to any formal description of its constituent parts. On display from 5 to 21 October. platformartsbelfast.com

QSS Artist Studios QSS hosted ‘Did That Really Happen?’, a two-person exhibition by QSS-based artist Dan Ferguson and Belfast-based artist Patrick Colhoun. Both artists rely on memory to direct their work. With age and deeper personal introspection, it has become a primary feature in Colhoun’s sculptures and Ferguson’s paintings. The element which unifies the two artists’ practice is the acceptance that the broader concept of ‘memory’ that underpins their work is malleable, unreliable, inconsistent, and possibly even false. On display from 6 to 27 October.

queenstreetstudios.net

RUA The 141st RUA Annual Exhibition at the Royal Ulster Academy is one of the most eagerly anticipated exhibitions in the Northern Irish cultural calendar, providing a unique platform for acclaimed artists and emerging talent to showcase their artwork in the galleries at the Ulster Museum. It is also a chance for the public to engage with a fully democratic, free admission exhibition. The exhibition presents painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, video and more. On display from 14 October 2022 to 3 January 2023.

royalulsteracademy.org

Vault Artist Studios ‘Sense of Place’ was an exhibition of new work by Belfast-based artist, Jonathan Brennan. Featuring large works on canvas, drawings and experimental photos, from several evolving series, Brennan attempts to conjure feelings of intrigue, awe and melancholy with these atypical depictions of spaces, both real and imagined. ‘Sense of Place’ included new work created in 2022. This is Brennan’s first solo exhibition since 2019 and celebrates atypical landscapes, places teetering on the edge, real views and imagined scenarios of Belfast and its surroundings. On display 14 to 30 October.

vaultartiststudios.com

Jonathan Brennan, Hic Jacet MPW et al., 2022, acrylic on canvas; image © and courtesy the artist.

Regional & International

Ards Arts Centre ‘Beyond Edges’ was a group exhibition of paintings, glass artefacts, and sculptures crafted in wood and metal by Andrea Spencer, Nicola Nemec, and Sharon Adams. This was an elegant and thought-provoking exhibition in which three woman artists investigate, interrogate and interpret their immediate locale and shared hinterland of open hills and dramatic coastlines in North Antrim. All three artists respond to the land and the impact of man’s intervention on it. On display from 8 September to 22 October. andculture.org.uk

Ballinglen Arts Foundation Gallery ‘Inherit’ was an exhibition by Place|Lab collective. The seeds of ‘Inherit’ were sown in Iceland in 2019 when the collective came together for a residency. The project then developed over time via Zoom , culminating in this diverse collection of thoughts and work. On display at Ballinglen Arts Foundation Gallery from 27 August to 27 September, the show will tour to Contemporary Art Space Chester (CASC) UK in November 2022, and to Springville Museum, Utah and MCLA Gallery 51, Massachusetts, USA, in 2023.

ballinglenartsfoundation.org

Coastal Wexford ‘Catch 22 /Art Tra’ took place during August and September on 22 beach locations around South Wexford. It featured the work of 15 Artists working in drawing, textile, painting, sculpture, photography and recycled materials. The coastal venues varied, depending on the tidal restrictions and weather. The project was funded through Wexford County Councils Arts Office – Small Arts Festival and Experimental Events Scheme 2022.

sunmoonandstarspress.wixsite.com/catch-22-art-tra

Custom House Studios and Gallery ‘Imagine Life Without Art’ by Bernadette Kiely was on display from 29 September to 23 October. Kiely grew up on the banks of the River Suir and has lived and worked on the quayside of the River Nore since the 1980s. This exhibition was an exploratory journey around her primary themes of the effects of weather and changing climate on land, landscape and human lives over time. It featured paintings, drawings and moving image created over a 25-year period.

customhousestudios.ie

Garter Lane Arts Centre ‘A Way of Showing’ by John Conway, featuring sculpture, installation, text-based work and moving image, is on display from 8 October to 12 November. Conway is a visual artist based in Rua Red in South Dublin. His work is characterised by innovative multi-disciplinary projects and sophisticated solo and participatory artworks which are often produced in response to sensitive, challenging, or novel contexts. He frequently commissions, curates, and collaborates with other specialists, and orchestrates complex projects.

garterlane.ie

Highlanes Gallery Brian Fay’s ‘The Most Recent Forever’, is a survey exhibition of the artist’s drawing practice, which was presented at Highlanes Gallery as a national tour in partnership with Limerick City Gallery of Art and Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre. Fay’s practice uses different representational strategies of drawing to record, depict and present models of time and temporality using pre-existing artefacts, objects and artworks to stand in for our own experience of time. The exhibition continues until 12 November.

highlanes.ie

KAVA ‘Awakening’ by Nicole O’Donnell was on display from 20 to 26 October. O’Donnell’s practice is influenced by the wilderness of the Irish landscape. Daily observations and the natural world are used to create imaginative landscape paintings that deal with themes of experience of place, memory. They are inspired by the endless complexity found in nature. This body of work focuses on what is both equally beautiful and degraded and is concerned with balancing both the abstract and realistic elements within. kava.ie

Pigyard Gallery The Pigyard Gallery in Wexford town presents a solo exhibition by artist Gillian Deeny from 15 October to 6 November. The exhibition, titled ‘Quest’, is delivered in partnership with Wexford County Council and Wex-Art, to coincide with Wexford Festival Opera 2022. As an artist, Deeny searches for meaning and beauty in the everyday, which includes detailed examinations of the Irish landscape and the natural world, where she finds quiet moments that resonate across different strands of poetry, philosophy, and ecology.

facebook.com/PigyardGallery

Solas Art Gallery ‘On Edge’ was a joint exhibition by Eileen Ferguson and Neal Greig, on display from 26 August to 17 September. This was their first exhibition together since 2010. They have their studios in Monaghan and on Coney Island, Sligo, where Eileen has her ancestral home. While Eileen and Neal’s paintings are thematically different, they are connected by a sense of colour, texture and an awareness of painterly tradition. The language of mark-making is explored and a sense of time and space conveyed.

solasart.ie

Sonic Acts Biennial Recently shown at Sonic Acts in Amsterdam, ‘Gauge’ (2015), is an experimental film installation showing tidal movements of sea ice off Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic. Using time-lapse from cameras on the floating sea ice, painted sea ice cliffs appear to rise and fall. The work is a collaboration of Danny Osborne, Patrick Thompson, Alexa Hatanaka, Sarah McNair-Landry, Eric McNair-Landry, Erik Boomer and Raven Chacon. On display 30 September to 23 October.

sonicacts.com

St. Luke’s Crypt The Project Twins’s exhibition ‘100 Seconds to Midnight’ takes its name from The Doomsday Clock, a metaphorical symbol that represents how close humanity is to self-destruction. In January 2020 the clock was set at 100 seconds to midnight. Employing minimal forms and graphic shapes, their work is rooted in the visual language of signs, symbols and pictograms which can be found in various systems of propaganda and control to communications and way-finding. On display from 1 to 24 September. sample-studios.com

The Earth Vision ‘Augmented Body, Altered Mind’ wove a brain-computer interface with an audiovisual environment on display at London’s The Earth Vision from 8 to 16 October. Created by Alan James Burns, the show celebrated different cognitive abilities used for creative problem-solving. ‘Augmented Body, Altered Mind’ explored the potential to collectively reshape the world towards a more diverse and sustainable future. It was initially conceived during Burns’s residency at the Science Gallery Dublin in 2020 and was presented at Carlow Arts Festival 2022.

theearthvision.com

‘Catch 22 /Art Tra’, Baginbun Beach, Wexford, 19 September; photograph by Lisa Kinneen, courtesy Andi MacGarry.

The Project Twins, ‘100 Seconds to Midnight’, 2022, installation view; image courtesy of the artists.