The draughtsman painter
"I like the idea of being a bit perverse. I never saw myself as 'The Salon Painter' producing the grand masterpiece,' Charles Cullen tells Brian McAvera

Design Portfolio

25 years of Irish art: a personal selection
Brian McAvera makes the case for a reappraisal of Irish artists who, he believes, have been undervalued by the art establishment over the past quarter century

A moment of transition
Catherine Marshall applauds Jonathan Dalton, philosopher painter, first-time exhibitor at the RHA Annual Exhibition, and winner of the Irish Arts Review and Ireland Ð US Council Portraiture Award

AIB Prize 2009
The AIB Prize has established itself as the most substantial and innovative award in recent years, writes Donal Maguire, as he assesses the work of the artists shortlisted this year

Ireland at Venice 2009
Sarah Browne and Gareth Kennedy's projects for the 53rd Venice Biennale have much to say about the current Irish condition; Marianne O'Kane Boal previews the work

The quick and the dead
Patrick Graham, Brian Maguire, Timothy Hawkesworth and Patrick Hall emerged during the turbulent 1980s and their current exhibition at Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane provides a timely opportunity to reconnect with our history, argues Michael Dempsey

Space exploration
Sinéad N’ Mhaonaigh's adherence to the practice of abstract painting is her most radical statement, suggests Catherine Leen, ahead of the artist's exhibition at Kevin Kavanagh Gallery in Dublin

Man of Aran
Currently on view at the Regional Cultural Centre Letterkenny, John Fitzgerald's drawings of currach men and their families on the Aran Islands in the 1960s not only transcend their own time, they leap into ours, writes John Cunningham

Drawing on sculpture
Drawing today subverts its historical definition, writes Patrick T Murphy, as he considers an unusual exhibition from Marie Foley, John Gibbons, Eilis O'Connell and Michael Quane at Macroom Town Hall Gallery in Cork

Realms of memory
Alannah Hopkin considers Anthony Scott, whose stylised bronze animals and references to Celtic mythology speak to a collective instinct without succumbing to the pull of sentiment

Urbis Modo
The National Photographic Archive has acquired 15 photographs by Irish photographer Donal Sheehan, from his epic ÔUrbis Modo' series; Arran Henderson views the work

The Annals of Loch CŽ: Scribes and manuscripts
The fact that the 16th century Annals of Loch CŽ were written at all must be attributed to the initiative of the patron, Brian Mac Diarmada who, unusually, also wrote parts of the manuscript himself, writes Bernadette Cunningham

Samuel Hayes' Avondale
In 1768, Samuel Hayes was awarded a gold medal by the Royal Dublin Society for making a plantation of 2,550 young beech trees at Avondale, Co Wicklow; Patrick Bowe surveys Hayes' estate, now managed by Coillte and open to the public

Borris House, Co Carlow
Peter Pearson admires Richard and William Morrison's Tudor-Gothic decorative additions to the original Georgian structure at Borris, and John Mulcahy recounts the remarkable life of one of its residents, Victorian adventurer Harriet Kavanagh

A new vernacular
Winner of the Arts Council Kevin Kieran Award for Architecture, Stephen Roe's built work acknowledges that a building is not ever truly complete but is indefinitely engaged in
a process of negotiation with its local environmental conditions, suggests Kevin Donovan

A quiet renaissance
Contemporary Irish craft has reinvented itself over the past five years and is now more culturally and economically relevant than ever before, argues Joseph McBrinn

Mountjoy's lost mapmaker
Mic Moroney reviews John Andrews' The Queen's Last Mapmaker, devoted to Richard Bartlett, the great Elizabethan artist-cartographer