Ann Quinn’s world is internalized, enclosed and informed mmmm by personal memories, writes Denise Ferran ahead of the artist’s solo exhibition at the Taylor Galleries
The colourful bustle of Temple Bar recedes as I enter the well-ordered Dublin studio of Ann Quinn. The evening sun illuminates the worked layers of pigment, beeswax and gesso on canvases, works for exhibition this summer at the Taylor Gallery, Dublin. I am immediately transported to her Donegal family farm in the townland of Listannagh, between St Johnston and Raphoe, a farm where her father grew up and where Ann was born the youngest of ten children. Verdant layers of paint depict this rich pasture land and what at first appears to be ditches enclosing the meadows crystalize into three score and more of Friesian cows in single file in My Father’s Cows making their way back down to the burn field after milking time (Fig 3 ). The title is reminiscent of the descriptive narratives given by another Donegal artist Melita Denaro who first influenced Ann Quinn at the age of nineteen when they met at an exhibition in the Glebe Gallery, near Letterkenny when Quinn sold her first painting while still a freshman at the National College of Art and Design.
Northern Ireland: 30 Years of Photography at Belfast Exposed and the MAC this summer highlights the medium as a highly-charged, critical artform that constantly questions its own role in the construction of memories, writes Stephanie McBride
As a building commissioned by a State entity charged with the stewardship of a precarious energy resource, Bord Gáis Network Services Centre warrants some reflection on its relevance as a benchmark and path-finder, writes Seán O’Laoire