Below is text written by Gemma Murphy that accompanied my solo show “Bardo: An Unknown Country” in the Ards Art Centre. Huge thanks to Gemma for her kind words and research into the exhibition.
Gemma Murphy
exhibition
RDH: SEPTEMBER 2019
01/09/19
More work done to “The Ferryman”. I think it’s lost any painterly charm.
02/09/19
‘Arena: Kusama Infinity’ - such a great artist!
“While the dead show dead art, living artists die.” - Yayoi Kusama
Hope springs eternal.
05/09/19
Great talk and workshop with Action Mental Health. Really positive and interesting feedback from the crowd.
Patrick Horan’s fantastic paintings in the Ards Art Centre’s Sunburst Gallery.
Called into the Ards Art Centre for a quick chat and a little look at two shows opening; Gavin McCrea’s installation and Patrick Horan’s paintings.
Yusuke Asai’s amazing installation in the Golden Thread Gallery
At Late Night Art Mark McGreevy’s ‘Flop Sweat’ in the MAC is marvellous! Brilliant use of colour. ‘Knick Knacks and Whatnots’ by Cameron Morgan in University of Atypical is excellent. Blown away by the work on display in the Golden Thread’s “Noise of Silence: Japanese Art Now’ especially Yusuke Asai’s huge mud installations.
06/09/19
“Ferryman” is unusable.
07/09/19
Finally finished the middle panel from the originally conceived “Pioneer” triptych. Think it stands on it’s own merit.
More progress to the the ‘Cooley’ piece.
11/09/19
Sketchbook work tonight.
12/09/19
Really enjoyed “Memory: The Origin of Alien” documentary.
“At the Mountains of Madness” by HP Lovecraft.
“What will humanity find when they look in the dark places?”
15/09/19
Studio work - some additions of spray paint to ‘Cooley’ piece. Walked away before digging too far.
Little panel piece, “The Horror! The Horror” Speed is it’s friend. Wooden supports are responsive to gestural work - less so with the charcoal marks - more layers needed to achieve tonal quality I’m after.
16/09/19
Wonderful article about my time up at Action Mental Health.
17/09/19
Increase in productivity lately. Could it be a confidence thing? I’m working no more or no less than the slump periods. Is it a case of a fine tuning of better judgement when more at peace with practice? Plenty to look forward to in the coming months.
19/09/19
21/09/19
Notes: immediate drawing line combined with more deliberate painterly marks. Cross pollination.
“LW” = by removing the instrument of trauma can it be viewed in a miraculous or redemptive light?
Not spelling out the narrative - Great to sit down and chat about work and ideas with GM.
Visit to PS Squared and “How the Image Echos” show.
Sea Holly Gallery is absolutely stunning and wonderful work on from the 545 pop up group show. So good to see elements of the much loved Orpheus building back in an artistic sense.
Craig Donald’s work alongside restored windows from the Orpheus building in the Sea Holly Gallery
22/09/19
Finished little panel piece.
24/09/19
Quarantined.
28/09/19
Studio work and “Dress Rehearsal Study” is getting there. It’s weird how every time I paint children they end up completely terrifying.
Ari Aster’s ‘Midsommar’ is utterly amazing. Beautifully filmed and will stay with me for a long time.
30/09/19
Collection of work for “Bardo” show tomorrow morning.
Action Mental Health Talk and Workshop
On Thursday 5th September I visited Action Mental Health in Newtownards to give a talk and run a drawing workshop ahead of a new solo exhibition opening in the Ards Art Centre next month. In the talk I spoke about my work and how my own experiences of mental health issues relate and continue to be drawn into my practice. The feedback and the discussion from the clients and staff there was amazing and I want to thank everyone involved on the day.
AMH has written a wonderful article about the visit here.
“Bardo: An Unknown Country” preview will be from 7pm on Thursday 3rd October in the Ards Art Centre and aims to raise funds for Action Mental Health.
This exhibition has been made possible by the iDA award from University of Atypical which is supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.
RDH: APRIL 2019
02/04/19
Derry today.
CCA - ‘Celebration Factory’ by Filip Markiewicz. Huge drawings and impressive array of work.
‘Fragmented’ by Aimee Melaugh in the Gasworks. Such a beautiful space. Can’t think of anyone who paints atmosphere and smoke like she can.
Joseph McWilliams “Community Door” 1976 part of the “Troubles Art” exhibition in Nerve Visual.
06/04/19
Work submitted to the RHA open call.
Detail of a piece by Cecilia Danell - part of her solo show “In a Landscape” in the RHA.
Intense paintings by Liliane Tomasko in the Kerlin Gallery.
08/04/19
Royal Academy - Renaissance Nude exhibition was great. Highlights were Pontormo’s “Study of a Nude Boy”, Dürer’s etchings, creepy little paintings by Hans Memling and, of course, Titian’s Venus.
National Gallery - “Rokeby Venus” by Velazquez is just an unbelievable painting! Real surprise was being moved by Caravaggio’s “Boy bitten by a lizard”. Came out of nowhere. Loved how the two Rembrandt portraits faced each other in their room. A conversation? “The Ambassadors” by Hans Holbein the Younger. Great to see it in the flesh finally. So many great works - probably could have stayed in there all week.
09/04/19
“Brighton Pierrots” by Walter Richard Sickert.
Went to Tate Britain and was annoyed that many of the works I had been looking forward to seeing were out of view for refurbishment. However it was great to see some other great pieces, including Sickert’s “Brighton Pierrots”.
View from Tate Modern.
Bonnard show was incredible. Wish it wasn’t as crowded to spend more time with the work. The self portraits were anxious and sinister. Preferred Franz West ’s collages to the sculptures.
10/04/19
11/04/19
Just shy of forty miles walked.
13/04/19
Horrible day in the studio. What’s done can be rectified thankfully but I’m not sure what brought it about.
Not enough looking?
Charging in?
Carelessness?
Fatigue?
All of the above?
Note for “Rose”: Less is more.
14/04/19
Rehearsal.
16/04/19
Still no word - need to not get hopes up.
18/04/19
“Ruins” detail.
Office wall.
Tried and failed at sketching.
19/04/19
Sketchbook work.
20/04/19
Eventually in the studio… “Ruins” is still an exciting composition so not sure why it’s stagnated.
“The Lost Woods Study” close up.
21/04/19
So - “Ruins” has ground things to a halt. Can’t say it is entirely the painting’s fault but it has eaten a lot of time where I’d be working on multiple pieces simultaneously.
I’m not abandoning it completely. Just setting it out of sight and out of mind until I’m in a better position to complete it to the best of my ability.
“The continuous practice of painting is a process against forgetting.”
Hans Ulrich Obrist
24/04/19
Night shot.
25/04/19
Some good drawing tonight.
26/04/19
Studio work. “Rose” face is all but there.
27/04/19
Dublin bound.
IMMA Freud Project: Gaze was stunning. “Relfection: Self Portrait” - have wanted to see this piece in the flesh for a long long time. Interesting mix of artists alongside Freud including a Hopper sketch, a Rembrandt etching, Abramovic, Dúrer, Dorothy Cross and others. The Doris Salcedo show “Acts of Mourning” was intense. Moved by “Plegoria Muda” and “Tabula Rasa” pieces the most. For the past week that has been in NI, we all need little blades of hope. Group show “A Vague Anxiety” was great, particularly the work of Saidhbhín Gibson (sculptures) and Susanne Wawra’s incredible paintings.
29/04/19
Scam emails- beware!
Exhibition Highlights 2018
These five exhibitions are in chronological order and are only my favourites of the shows I was able to attend in person. There were many that I was dying to see but in the end, couldn’t make.
WHITE
Curated by Colin Darke
QSS Gallery, Belfast
02/02/18 - 22/02/18
This was the fourth group show curated by Colin Darke that was based upon the four titles of Barnett Newman paintings (“Whose Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue”). According to the text accompanying the exhibition, linking works in accordance with colour “allows for a level of visual cohesion, while retaining the conceptual and aesthetic diversity that defines Queen Street Studios”. Ordinarily white, in a gallery context, inhabits the space between works. In this show however you become strangely aware of the normally silent walls. In Craig Donald’s installation “Ozymandias” sections of the gallery wall are set centre stage; framed by colours that correlate in other drawings and paintings within the installation. You become aware of the void.
Nightfall - amplissium terrarum tractum
David Godbold
Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast
03/02/18 - 10/03/18
This group exhibition by David Godbold in the Golden Thread Gallery really was a stunner. In gallery one, the works that give the name of the show, “Nightfall - Amplissium terrarum tractum” takes up an entire wall. Consisting of 116 framed drawings and a wall drawing in neon, I found myself getting drawn into the gorgeous and witty drawings usually accompanied with text loaded with humour and a certain political sting. Then all of a sudden I would walk backwards, trying to take in the sheer audacious scale of the work as a whole. I was especially taken by the drawing with the text "Infamy, infamy, everybody’s got it in for me” - a one liner from “Carry on Cleo” which my dad regularly cries aloud. Gallery two sees landscapes, beautifully painted and paired off with one in daylight and the other at night. Showing these romantic locations at different times of the day means you can never fully see the region in its entirety.
Future Perfect - Contemporary Art from Germany
Curated by Angelika Stepken and Philipp Ziegler
The Model, Sligo
06/05/18 - 01/07/18
During a summer break down to Sligo it would have been rude not to visit some of the galleries. This travelling group show did not disappoint. Sixteen artists envision and speculate about the future and reflect on the promises it could bring. The installation of Nora Schultz called “Discovery of the Primitive” reminded me of a transportable monolith like the one in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”. Schultz gathers found objects from around her Berlin studio to assemble these delicate structures that also double as printmaking stations. It dominated the room and sticks in the memory. Antje Majewski’s paintings were impressive in scale and in detail. The lengthy title “Decorative element that once adorned a passage leading to a shrine” was a large circular painting consisting of smaller overlapped orbs of differing gold and green. The same ‘decorative element’ makes a cameo in the even larger painting - more akin to history painting of old. “The Donation” sees a large group of people witnessing an exchange in what looks like a gallery with warped dimensions and off kilter paintings on the wall.
At the gates of the Music Palace
Alex Cecchetti
Curated by Mary Cremin
VOID Gallery, Derry-Londonderry
04/08/18 - 22/09/18
I was lucky enough to see this show on the opening night where the artist Alex Cecchetti was giving a guided tour of the works. A serial collaborator almost all of the works came to fruition as a result of Cecchetti working with musicians, dancers and singers. The first gallery was bathed in a pink light with two large copper cones suspended at the far end. If you move across the sensors musical notes are played and according to different gestures you can actually play music. Cecchetti and a dancer then played a piece of music they composed by dancing in front of the “Music Hall” installation. Gallery 2 held a sound installation entitled “Cetaceans” where a human choir sang like whales. This room was in darkness and you were encouraged to lay down and let the sounds wash over you. The third room had my favourite piece of collaborative work by Cecchetti. Oil paintings on crystal and rise paper hangs from a structure surrounding a piano meaning when people from the tour poured in and no matter where they stood they could see the works on the paper - even from the back where I stood. A synesthetic musician then sat at the piano and read the works like a sheet of music. Even by just watching the paintings you could follow the musician as they played and I found it totally engrossing. Probably the best show featuring audience participation I’ve seen.
Not Half Right
Jane McCormick
Atypical Gallery, Belfast
12/11/18 - 21/12/18
I stumbled into the Atypical gallery on my way to see the MAC international exhibition (which had incredible works by Ali Cherri, Aisling O’Beirn and the winner Nikolaus Gansterer) and hadn’t any preconceived notions what “Not Half Right” by Jane McCormick contained. What I came across was an incredibly strong practice that explores deeply personal and intimate issues in a scarily wide range of media. Medicine bottles with text and images of children replaced the label. A heart shaped box with tablets instead of chocolates resonated with me. It was humorous and darkly menacing at the same time. Is it a comment on today’s ‘there’s a pill for that’ culture, a love note to how medication has helped the artist or something else? You can’t help but bring your own experience to the work here. The self portrait drawings on what McCormick calls “useless articles and medically-related tat” are visceral, bold and expresses the frustrating and tiring nature of the “never ending search for ‘the cure’”.