Mollie Douthit’s solo exhibition ‘Daily Bread’ at the Molesworth Gallery references how her daily routine of painting has become a source of psychological and emotional sustenance. The work exhibited is a visual diary of her life, using paint in a way that feels like writing to the artist.
Mollie Douthit: 6 – 28 June
The Butler Gallery presents work by New York-based artist, Amy Cutler, which draws from the media, popular culture, fairy tales, and her own experiences to convey the complexities of womanhood. At once autobiographical and universal, Cutler’s works are delicately rendered, whimsical parables illustrating the deleterious effects of the unrealistic expectations that cultures impose on women. A sense of magic infuses the work, in which women engage in strange, enigmatic, and often useless tasks against white backgrounds—mending gashes in tigers, pulling buildings with their long braids, flattening each other with irons.
Amy Cutler: 10 August – 6 October
Limerick School of Art and Design graduate Nadia Corridan has an exhibition entitled ‘In Time’ at the Presentation Arts Centre. The work explores the themes of memory and touch through the use of colour, form, light and composition. Corridan’s bare canvases and muted palette evoke gaps of uncertainty, enabling the viewer to complete the narrative through reflection on personal memories.
Nadia Corridan: 23 August – 3 September
The Chimera Gallery, Mullingar presents the first Irish exhibition of work by American artist Jennifer Balkan. ‘The Human Condition’ explores suppressed impulses, identity, instinct, demons and monsters through mythical imagery. Balkan’s paintings are emotionally-based psychological narratives where the details lie in planes of colour, used to capture various emotional states.
Jennifer Balkan: 1 – 31 July
The Jorgensen Gallery’s Summer Selection features works by some of Ireland’s best-known artists, including Patrick Hennessy, John Kingerlee, and Tony O’Malley. The former’s ‘Seagull and Yellow Rose’ is among the exhibition’s highlights: first exhibited at the David Hendrick’s Gallery in 1972, the work exemplifies Hennessy’s magic realist and symbolist style. Alongside this, Kingerlee’s ‘Landscape and Figure’ is typical of the artist’s densely textured abstract paintings which attempt to portray a multi-sensory engagement with nature. Finally, O’Malley’s ‘Black and Amber’ shows how the artist approached landscape painting in a visceral way, revealed by a deeply textured canvas. Image: John Kingerlee
John Kingerlee: 1 June – 31 August
‘Oidhreacht: Transforming Tradition’ at the Highlanes Gallery displays a range of artworks and objects exploring traditional Irish art and culture from the 18th century to today. It includes diverse examples offering a sense of the range of representations and expressions of tradition in visual art and material culture. The exhibition includes loans from NGI, IMMA, as well as the Drogheda Municipal Collection and private loans. Image: Daniel Maclise
Oidhreacht: Transforming Tradition: 13 July – 14 September
‘Sovereign Realms’ is Margo Banks’ first solo exhibition at Solomon Fine Art showing a range of the artist’s distinctive charcoal, chalk and crayon drawings of Irish wildlife. These large scale mixed media works on Fabriano paper owe a debt to Banks’s experience with modelling as a ceramic artist and sculptor. Wholly contemporary in their composition, they also maintain a timeless quality.
Margo Bank: 12 July – 3 August
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus, the National Gallery of Ireland presents a set of four Bauhaus portfolios of prints, on loan from Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart.The portfolios, comprising of fifty-two woodcuts, etchings, lithographs and linocuts include prints by Lyonel Feininger, Paul Klee, Franz Marc, Max Beckmann, George Grosz, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Marc Chagall, Wassily Kandinsky, Umberto Boccioni, and Natalia Goncharova, illustrating the Bauhaus motto ‘Rethink the World’. Image: Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944), Composition, (detail) 1922. Image: Courtesy of Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Graphische Sammlung. Photo: © Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
NGI: 20 July – 1 December
The Pastel Society of Ireland celebrates its 30th anniversary with a Members’ Exhibition in the CHQ Building, showcasing the work of its many artists. Since its foundation, the Society has sought to encourage and promote the art and practice of pastel painting by bringing together pastel artists with a wide range of abilities, to feature their crafts, skills and artistic abilities. Later in the year, the Society’s annual exhibition will be held in the Island Arts Centre, Lisburn. Image: David Sweet.
CHQ Building: 15 – 21 July
Peter Nash’s ‘I Remember Nothing, I Remember This’, at the Garter Lane Arts Centre brings together animation, sculpture and print to explore how remembered stories and imagery are eroded by the passing of time. The exhibition continues the artist’s ongoing research into pre-internet sources of knowledge and methods of communication to explore human fallibility in an age of digital perfection, alternative facts and increasing automation.
Peter Nash: 4 July – 14 August
The Municipal Gallery at dlr Lexicon hosts the 161st Royal Photographic Society International Photography Exhibition. A celebration of photography today, the exhibition showcases the best of contemporary photography from established and emerging photographers. It offers an insight into current trends and subjects at a time when photography and the moving image have never been more relevant to the human experience; and also provides a platform for new generations of photographers. Artists include Heather Agyepong, Kristin Bedford, Christopher Bethell, Tom Blachford, Fergus Coyle, Sebastián Delgado and Lauren Forster. Image: Christopher Bethell
dlr Lexicon: 4 July – 4 September
A celebration of the life and works of James Morrison (1954 – 2017) takes place at the Signal Arts Centre. ‘Teallach’ brings together work from private collections that demonstrate Morrison’s lifelong commitment to a meticulous realist style. Born in Newbridge, Co Kildare, Morrison lived in Bray for much of his life and was a founder of the Signal Arts Centre.
James Morrison: 11 – 23 June
The Arts Department of Wexford County Council in partnership with Wexford Arts Centre and the Kamera 8 Gallery host an exhibition of contemporary Irish and German art. ‘HEREthere’ explores and reinforces the cultural exchange between the Rhineland and south-east Ireland throughout our shared past. As part of the project, work by Irish artists will also be shown in Wuppertal in Germany. Featured artists include Fergus Doyle, Chris Dreier, Isabel Kerkermeier and Helen O’Leary. Image: Wolfgang Flad.
HEREthere: 24 June – 16 August
‘Our Plundered Plant’, an exhibition by American artist Mark Dion at the Dublin City Gallery the Hugh Lane, explores human treatment of the natural environment, tempered with a dose of humour and playfulness. At a time when greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are at historically high levels and the polar glaciers are melting, Dion’s work poses the question of human responsibility.
Mark Dion: 4 April – 1 September
‘Shaping Ireland: Landscapes in Irish Art’ at the National Gallery of Ireland explores the significant role artists have played in shaping our perception and understanding of Ireland’s changing landscape over the past 250 years. Comprising oil paintings, sculpture, works on paper, video and photography, the exhibition brings together works by artists ranging from Thomas Roberts and George Petrie to Niamh O’Malley and Dorothy Cross.
Shaping Ireland: Landscapes in Irish Art: 20 April – 7 July
Presented as part of the IMMA Collection: Lucien Freud Project 2016 -2021, ‘Life Above Everything: Lucien Freud and Jack B Yeats’ examines the interconnections between these two stubbornly individual painters. It places them side by side for the first time since 1948, when they both exhibited work in London. David Dawson, an artist and Freud’s long-time studio assistant, has assisted in the selection, bringing to the project a unique knowledge of Freud’s interest in Yeats.
IMMA: 29 June – 19 January 2020
