Limerick City Gallery of Art 16 February – 7 April 2024 When observing Eddie Cahill’s solo exhibition at Limerick City Gallery of Art (LCGA), one enters into a continually developing personal universe, filled with stormy scenes, shadows, and abstracted figures. In the accompanying text, Cahill reflects that this exhibition is symbolic of his life’s journey; he spent time in Limerick Prison in the 1980s and has now returned to Limerick to celebrate ‘Searching in the Dark’. The presented paintings offer personal and collective reflections on structures of power, experiences of isolation, and bot ..read more

Maggie Madden, Gathering, 2022, stone and marble; photograph by David Monahan, courtesy of the artist and Fingal County Council.  Artwork Title: Gathering Artist’s Name: Maggie Madden Commissioning Body: Cosgrave Developments Date Sited: 1 April 2022 Budget: €60,000 Commission Type: Local Authority Project Partners: Fingal County Council’s Public Art Programme Maggie Madden, Gathering, 2022, stone and marble; photograph by David Monahan, courtesy of the artist and Fingal County Council.  Gathering (2022) is a series of four stone and marble sculptures commissioned for a new housing ..read more

The Glucksman 1 December 2023 – 10 March 2024  ‘Territory’ is a solo exhibition of recent works by Hughie O’Donoghue at The Glucksman in Cork. This show comprises eight large-scale paintings and one sculpture. The paintings are largely oil and mixed-media works on repurposed tarpaulin and flour sacks. They depict seascapes and various scenes of the Irish countryside, often accompanied by a male figure. I am drawn to the nuts and bolts of O’Donoghue’s paintings: the screws pierced through tarpaulin; the layered glops of resin, petrified along the edges of paintings like molluscs on rocks ..read more

ELLA DE BÚRCA OUTLINES THE EVOLUTION OF HER PRACTICE TO DATE. My mixed-media practice functions through modes of inquiry, working through performance, sculpture, and poetry to focus on how humans construct meaning, particularly from a female perspective. I have created site-specific installations and scripts that develop from historical events, merging, layering, and adding my own musings and fictions. My creations become hybrid entities that look towards a future of inclusivity, while envisioning an Irish society in which artists are taken seriously.  My work has been shown in many setti ..read more

Uillinn: West Cork Art Centre 16 March – 11 May 2024  Curated by Catherine Bowe and Karla Sánchez Zepeda, Els Dietvorst’s ‘Adrift’ at Uillinn: West Cork Art Centre is an exhibition that reveals itself slowly. At once minimalist yet monumental, there is a sense of interconnectedness through the sea to people and places, both near and far. Natural and manmade totemic objects form a resonance that aligns with a universal, impersonal power that has become weakened and obscured in our Western society. Dietvorst is a Belgian interdisciplinary artist who has been living in Ireland for the last 1 ..read more

The MAC, Belfast 8 December 2023 – 7 April 2024 Curated by Belinda Quirke, Niamh McCann’s solo exhibition ‘someone decides, hawk or dove’ fills all three galleries at the MAC, and includes sculpture, furniture, photography, and montage. The Sunken Gallery introduces the show (and its narrator, Colin the blind dog) in the video, titled The Hairline Crack (Belfast Edit) (2023), referencing Ciaran Carson’s poem of the same name, looking at uncertainties and absurdities thrown up by ‘The Troubles’. The title of the exhibition is taken from a line in the poem: “Someone decides, hawk or dove. Ambush ..read more

VARVARA KEIDAN SHAVROVA REVIEWS THE CURRENT SCULPTURE EXHIBITION AT HAYWARD GALLERY LONDON.  Currently showing at the Hayward Gallery in London until 6 May, ‘When Forms Come Alive: Sixty Years of Restless Sculpture’, presents a substantial survey exhibition, under the curatorial direction of Ralph Rugoff, and assistant Katie Guggenheim.  Presenting over 50 artworks by 21 international artists across three floors of the gallery’s brutalist interior, the exhibition features expanded sculptural works that originate in the natural world and interrogate sculpture as a methodology of trans ..read more

Roscommon Arts Centre  2 February – 29 March 2024 Lorraine Tuck’s exhibition ‘Unusual Gestures’ elevates the depiction of family life to an artform, and, in the process, extends the boundaries of what is made visible. A documentary photographer, Tuck photographs what surrounds her: her family, her environment, her reality. My first encounter with ‘Unusual Gestures’ was during its premiere at Galway International Arts Festival in 2023. Recently seen again at Roscommon Arts Centre, ‘Unusual Gestures’ is still an emotive viewing experience. A highly personal body of work, it is a photographi ..read more

THOMAS POOL INTERVIEWS WAYLON GARY WHITE DEER, A CHOCTAW ARTIST WITH A STRONG CONNECTION TO IRELAND, ABOUT HIS ARTISTIC BACKGROUND, PRACTICE, AND THE ENDURING INFLUENCE OF THE CHOCTAW NATION’S GIFT TO THE IRISH PEOPLE DURING THE GREAT FAMINE. Thomas Pool: What can you tell us about your artistic background? How did you come to be an artist, what motivates your work, and how has your practice evolved over the years? Waylon Gary White Deer: My first motivation was my father. There’s an almost lost genre. I’m one of the few practitioners that’s still alive, doing Traditional Indian Art, also call ..read more

Thomas Pool: For the past 25 years, Cartoon Saloon has been at the forefront of Irish animation. Nominated for several Oscars® and Golden Globes®, as well as picking up BAFTA® and Emmy® wins, your studio has brought Irish animation to audiences around the world. Can you walk us through your history, your mission, and where you’re going next? Nora Twomey: Having met while studying animation at Ballyfermot College in the 1990s, a dozen of us animators really gelled as creatives, and wanted to draw together and make stories for the screen. We didn’t want to emigrate, as many of our peers were doi ..read more