RHA Annual Exhibition - part 1 of 2

It has been many years since I attended the annual exhibition at the RHA in Dublin, so it really took me by surprise just how much work there was to see! 

I couldn't help but be impressed by the quality of the work also, it wasn't just quantity.  

The first room downstairs seemed the most orderly in the way it was hung - pieces seemed to relate to one another in a thematic, colour or movement type of way and this was a satisfying way to look at work, though I would have preferred more space around individual works.

Each work deserved way more time than I gave it -- the first couple of rooms really won out when it came to my attention, but it was somewhat overwhelming to know that there were several huge rooms waiting upstairs...

I don't even have a picture of the large hall which was chock-a-block with small works, mostly paintings, skyed almost to the ceiling. The stairwell seemed to be dedicated to the work of one ARHA member. The room full of prints asked for closer attention to individual pieces and I was only able to give this attention if something stood out and/or was familiar - in that I have taken several printmaking classes over the past few years and participated in a number of zoom artist talks during the pandemic so recognised the work of particular artists.

While I object to and don't participate in open exhibitions where the artist has to make a payment, I find the RHA Annual Exhibition somewhat distasteful in that there are three distinct tiers: ARHA (part of the club!) members are ENTITLED to exhibit several pieces of work, for whatever reason some artists are INVITED to exhibit, and the rest (about 2/3) PAY a fee to enter. Competition is high and not everyone is accepted, but it sure is a huge batch of cream! Regardless of my personal opinion, within Ireland exhibiting at the RHA Annual Exhibition is considered a privilege and an honour.

ALL of the work in the exhibition is worth taking the time to see. I will do another post on individual pieces that I paid the most attention to. The exhibition runs till July 24.

"Show and Tell" at Signal Arts Centre

The very first evening Show and Tell event was held by Signal Arts Society (SAS) at Signal Arts Centre in mid-May. As I have recently started working at Signal and am automatically a member of the SAS, as well as becoming the sub-committee minute-taker, somehow the event fell to me to make sure this first event ran smoothly. I had already planned to attend the event so it wasn't too much of a stretch to work it. There were two artists scheduled to do the Show and Tell. Myra Jago and Yanny Petters. I introduced Myra first.

Myra spoke of her process - how she created collages on the computer. printed the completed works on silk and crumpled them up and use these works as the subjects of meticulously detailed oil paintings. While she displayed images of the paintings in an accompanying slide show, Myra had brought in a number of the silk works to show and discuss with the audience. The paintings show Myra's artistic concern with light and reflection and she described the detailed work that goes into gessoing and sanding the canvas prior to painting so that the finish is completely smooth. Seeing the actual silk collages, however, gave a huge insight into Myra's psychological concerns with protest, the environment, innocence and any other subject that comes to mind but remains hidden in the final work. 

Yanny Petters gave an equally fascinating talk about one specific piece, which she brought in to show, and accompanied the talk with a slide show of the work in progress. Yanny worked as a sign writer in the past and uses techniques of verre eglomisé and gilding - painting on glass and gold leaf application -

in her gorgeous and delicate floral paintings. Yanny's re-creation of a hedgerow in all its complexity in a two-dimensional space is nothing less than miraculous. She explained the process of painting in reverse order on the back of the glass and visualising the work in reverse order. In addition to the painting and application of gold leaf, depth is manifested by the very shadows that the painted flowers and leaves cast onto the background when the work is framed.

I don't have a picture of the work she brought in that night but here is a triptych of The Rose Family: Bramble - Dog Rose - Wild Strawberry that gives an idea of the detail in Yanny's work.

The front gallery of Signal can hold an intimate crowd (20-25 people seated) and it was full of an enrapt group. Both artists held the audience in thrall and elicited many questions.The evening was a resounding success and sets a high standard for future Show and Tell events at the centre. I look forward to the future events!  

inspired by flowers

I always seem to be noticing flowers and admit that I find them inspiring! Wisteria hasn't yet entered my painted repertoire, but I always stop to look at it when I see it. This picture was taken a couple of months ago before the flowers were fully in bloom. I was in Dublin that morning and just had to stop and snap the trained wildness over this doorfront.

My absolute favourite example of the trained wildness that is wisteria is this magical portal here in Bray. I used to live up the street from this house so watched it bloom every year.

This is one of my favourite gardens in Bray, and right next to the wisteria gate is a gorgeous magnolia tree. As the tree is so close to the footpath it was easy for me to do sketches of the flowers in different phases of bloom when I lived so close by.

The result of my sketching that particular tree was this acrylic painting that I did in the spring of 1999 and which was included in my Blessings exhibition at Signal Arts Centre that fall. In 2000 the exhibition was again displayed at Cavan County Museum, Ballyjamesduff. It currently resides in a private collection in the US.

As well as working from sketches and photographs flowers also appear in my dreams. When I lived in rural Kerry in the mid-90s I noticed that many people had beautiful and enormous calla lilies in their spacious front gardens. In fact, I think this may have been my first experience of seeing these flowers other than in pictures and I was quite taken with them. So much so that I dreamt about them, albeit in my dream life the flowers were vibrantly coloured. I made this Father's Day collage card in 1995, and a later riffing on these images painted the curtains that became the main part of my installation Dreaming for Dad, which was created as a memorial for my father (he died in September 1995) and exhibited at The Basement Gallery, Dundalk in 1996.

When thinking of seminal images of my home and life in Kerry for my painting Knockeen, the dream calla lilies made a large appearance. This large painting from 2021 was part of my exhibition Memory Is My Homeland at Rathfarnham Castle earlier this year. 

painting on glass

Some time in the mid-1980s I acquired a bunch of small glass and mirror panels (approximately 12.5 x 7.5 cm// 5 x 2.75 inches) and  had the idea to make some boxy gifts for friends and family. I don’t remember how many of these boxes I made but I never photographed them, so for the most part they are lost to time. Since this one was a gift I had given my Mum & Dad it is currently in my possession. 

I painted the open yellow tulip (one of my signature flowers) directly onto the back of the glass and then painted the image of the red-sailed boat with a star (a dream image) onto the back of the tulip so that it could only be visible from the mirror view.

I also painted this figure on a tiny glass panel around the same time and may have been intending to turn it into a gift box, although I completely painted it so wouldn't have been planning a mirror component. I painted this figure directly onto the back of the glass in a reverse method and scratched into the paint for the line work.

While I may have originally intended to create a gift box with this piece, for some reason I kept it for myself as a simple drawing. It has resided on my kitchen window ledge for decades. I have since come across the concept of "verre eglomisé" as a technique for reverse painting on glass and wonder if my little gift experiments qualify...

BAEC exhibition at Signal Arts Centre

I was at the launch of the Bray Adult Education (BAEC) exhibition of student work (from final years of both 2022 and 2021) at Signal Arts Centre last Friday evening.  The show’s title The Art Within was complemented by BAEC's Director Ray Finucane’s opening speech regarding the journey of each individual on the road to developing their art and the unquantifiability of the art. 

The exhibition is a fine showcase of the varied art and craft processes that the students learn at BAEC, each piece showing an individual creative response to a process. 

As well as the numerous crafted work on display - felted 2D & 3D works, ceramics, leathercraft, mosaics and pyrography - 

the walls were full of paintings and drawings, showcasing the developing skills of the students, many of whom had never formally explored art forms before.

The age old tradition of student artists copying from the Masters is visible on this wall!

The exhibition consists of work by this 2022's second (final) year students and last year's second year students since, due to covid restrictions, did not get to have an end-of-course exhibition.

So it was a big show to organise and hang!

Much appreciation went to the staff at Signal who basically curated as well as hung the show on the Monday beforehand in order to show each work at its best.

A return to live events!

Towards the end of April I was so excited (but still cautious) about going to the National Concert Hall in Dublin to see a live event. I had bought tickets to see Laurie Anderson before the pandemic, and then of course, everything in the world went topsy-turvy and the event was cancelled. As things started to reopen Anderson had started touring again, and so the anticipated event took place with me in the audience! I had happily been accessing (online) Ms Anderson's output over the past two years (6 Harvard "lectures", the "Party in the Bardo" radio show, and various Hirshorn Museum events)

However, familiarity with Ms Anderson's recent work is no replacement for the live event! The evening was exciting and delightful! Anderson was accompanied by the wild improvising cellist, Rubin Kodheli. What a wonderful experience!

A few days later, Bray Jazz Festival - an annual May bank holiday event - returned to live events. For many years I have been following amazing musician brothers, Conor Guilfoyle (drums) and Ronan Guilfoyle (bass), and their various jazz projects.

This year The Conor Guilfoyle Octet was set to appear at The Mermaid Arts Centre celebrating the birth of "cool jazz" about 75 years ago. The music was totally fresh - what a joy to be there!

Looking at the Festival programme, I found out that Tudo Bem, Ronan Guilfoyle's Brazilian jazz outfit was playing at The Harbour Bar the next evening.  It was certainly strange for me to be out and about at three live events in the space of a week after several years of livestreaming and zoom events only, but it felt good and right!

Five Years at Rathfarnham Castle

A couple of weeks ago I had great delight in attending the launch of both The Dublin Bowie Festival 2022 and the affiliated exhibition Five Years, by graphic designer Cartoon Bowie, at the gorgeous Rathfarnham Castle. For me it was especially interesting to see how the space was transformed after my recent exhibition of paintings and prints there. For a look at my work, Memory Is My Homeland, installed at this venue see my blogs here, here and here.

While technically The Dining Room is the last exhibition room one is likely to enter, The Entrance Hall offers a lovely portal view of a large animation, setting a great mood for the evening.

The Saloon was full of graphic images of Bowie, grouped thematically. I spoke to Cartoon Bowie on the launch night and he talked of the more recent images in blue and yellow, which he created after the Russian invasion and subsequent war in Ukraine. Specifically he confirmed, as with Bowie himself, that each time he thought he was done with this body of work, some new theme would present itself. 

Among my favourite images in the exhibition were the most minimal ones.

But on the other hand, I also adored the use of Japanese calligraphic characters in the group of works that celebrated the work of costume designer and Bowie image collaborator, Kansai Yamamoto.

On the end wall in this room were a series of works which emulated, through a Bowie point of view, the work of other artists - one can certainly see an homage to The Beatles Sgt Pepper album, and I recognised immediately the vintage cruise ship travel poster look to illustrate the song Fantastic Voyage.

I really enjoyed that the works were all designed squarely as faux but very plausible album covers.

Cartoon Bowie also showed his wit throughout the exhibition - a wit that I am sure the great Bowie woulld have approved of wholeheartedly.

During the Bowie Festival and for the duration of this exhibition, limited edition prints are available for purchase with all proceeds going to humanitarian aid in Ukraine.

The works in The Pistol Loop room continued with the theme of an ever-stunning, ever-changing consideration of Bowie's profile.

Throughout the exhibition each grouping had it's own didactic, which located the works in Bowie lore and offered a personal commentary from Cartoon Bowie.

The Starman wall was a stark reminder that Bowie is no longer on the earth, having returned to the cosmos in January 2016, shortly after the release of his final album Blackstar. The joy, though, is evident especially in the lower images (outlining a black star) and a reminder also that David Bowie has left a huge legacy to the music, art, fashion and film industries as well as to humanity in general! Cartoon Bowie used his skills as graphic designer to pay an amazing tribute to this amazing man.