Janet Mullarney’s sculptures perform as metaphors, not portraits, writes Cliodhna Shaffrey
Janet Mullarney’s dual exhibitions this November at the Taylor and RHA galleries, Dublin, present an occasion to view this artist’s exceptional work. The exhibitions contains both older and new work and, while substantial in ambition, it is not conceived as a retrospective, rather as a means in which to bring together a comprehensive and singular body of work, where the artist is recycling and revisiting a small number of older pieces and presenting these alongside the new. Her desire is to reveal the close relationships that exist between her different works and an underlying concern that has remained at the heart of her work; namely an interest in the human condition and the frailty that lies within its dark and more malevolent sides. This is a complex subject, which Mullarney has always treated with a degree of contradiction and ambiguity. There is distance and there is humour, but there is also compassion and a feeling for vulnerability achieved through her dexterous use and understanding of a wide range of materials and forms and the obvious pleasure she takes in making.