PULSE at Limerick City Gallery of Art

Though it seems ages away now, on the way home from The Burren (which I blogged about here) at the end of August, we took the route that would lead us to Limerick as I especially wanted to see the PULSE exhibition at Limerick City Gallery of Art. This was organised as a covid response to the fact that recent graduates (2017-2021) of art colleges had missed out on opportunities for end-of-year exhibitions and/or other exhibiting opportunities that normally follow graduation. There were 16 artists in total, most getting space to show a few pieces of their work.

The artists are: Paul Cashin, Paddy Critchley, Judy Foley, Shane Hynan, Aisling Jelinski, Grace Loughlin, Day Magee, Sinéad McKillican, Katie Moore, Daniel Murray, Andrew Neville, Jonathan O'Grady, Bara Palcik, Sorcha Frances Ryder, Niamh Schmidtke and Nicola Sheehan. *Apologies to any artist whose work is in my pictures below - justice has definitely not been done - my pictures are simply to give an idea of the scope of the exhibition.

The exhibition took up most rooms on the ground floor of the gallery. After entering the gallery, where work was visible the foyer walls, taking a right turn I ended up in two adjoining smaller spaces. In this picture the main entrance is visible with some of the photos from the foyer as well as work of Grace Loughlin in this small room.

Judy Foley's two wall-mounted icon pieces and the tableaux installation to mend an aorta (which won an Irish Research Council Award) were also in this gallery. 

In an adjoining area of this room was Kate Moore's Entropy, an installation of dried gypsophilia flowers.

Several artists with large works were located in a large gallery space. 

I realise I lost the sheet that connected the artists names with their work. There were also several video artists represented in the exhibition, but I could not photograph a screen to give any sense of the work. 

Another large gallery contained the work of two artists, each having space to present mini bodies of work.

These are paintings by Paddy Critchley.

I think the show seemed like a graduate group show, but there was a high level of competence. It was exciting to see most art forms being represented: sculpture, painting, photography, video and installation art. The artists were chosen by Patrick T Murphy (Director, RHA) and artist Aideen Barry.