A careful look at the small details

Visual ArtsAidan Dunne Reviewed: Robert Armstrong,Paintings, Kevin Kavanagh, 66 Great Strand Street, Dublin. Ends Mar 10 (01-8740064). WaypointsDavid Begley, Cross Gallery, 59 Francis Street, Dublin. Ends Mar 10 (01-4738978). This time I promise to be more carefulIsabel Nolan, Kerlin Gallery, Anne's Lane, South Anne Street, Dublin. Until Mar 17 01-6709093

WH Auden's poem Musée des Beaux Arts addresses Brueghel's Icarus, noting how the picture's ostensible subject, the crux of the story, has been relegated to the margins, almost as an afterthought to everything else that is going on in the painting. The Old Masters knew the position that suffering occupies, the poet observes. It happens "while someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along".

In his paintings at the Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Robert Armstrong has taken another, though closely related, tack in his approach to the Old Masters. Most of the paintings in his show focus and elaborate on minor background details in classical compositions, or reconsider aspects of classical works that did not in the first place fit comfortably with our notions of particular artists or the their contemporary worldview.

Not that he is exclusively or obsessively interested in anatomising classical paintings in a revisionist vein. The processes and nature of representation are more the focus of his interest.

Underlying his work is the proposition that images are never neutral or transparent, as they are still largely presumed to be. That is to say, even with our awareness of spin and manipulation, we tend to treat images as if they are purely as they pretend in the daily media fest. Armstrong has two lines of argument. One is that an image is likely to harbour or conceal relevant information that is not immediately apparent, as in a view of a dwelling that seems to be a model of domestic security but is not quite. The other is that we may fail to appreciate what is staring us in the face - such as the startling modernity of Dürer's apocalyptic dream.

HIS SOURCES EXTEND beyond the realm of fine art, to news and nature documentary. In his lectures on literature, Vladimir Nabokov asserted that there is no such thing as reading, only re-reading, and the logic of Armstrong's work is that when it comes to painting, there is no such thing as looking, only looking again. He constitutes his paintings in a way that enacts a process of re-working and re-looking. We can see how they are made, built up in restrained, carefully considered layers. Lest that makes them sound too analytical, it should be said that they are also beautifully painted, displaying an unerring instinct for colour, for example. Rather than pinning down art historical points, he delights in the ambiguities and possibilities opened up.

He is certainly alert to the historians' tendency to approach a work of art as though it were a crime scene, but his own aims are different. Like the crew from CSI, they go through the forensics. But he is more an art historical Lieut Columbo: "Been great taking to you, Mr Brueghel, and good luck with the exhibition. Make sure to give my regards to Mrs Brueghel - oh, before I go, there's just one little thing. You say you didn't notice anything unusual and of course I'm no art historian, and I'm sure there's some simple explanation for this, but isn't that a man falling into the water there in the corner of your painting?"

David Begley's Waypoints at the Cross Gallery also highlight the constitution of an image and how we see it. His paintings are dreamy reflections on his travels in Germany and Spain during 2006. He is good on atmosphere, mingling fragmented snippets of imagery in evocative postcards suggestive of memory and imagination. Most of the work is very small in scale, and he is comfortable with that, but he is much less sure of things in the larger paintings, which seem over-extended and uneasy.

FROM THE FIRST, wry commentary has been Isabel Nolan's preferred mode of expression. Another constant is her reluctance to be pinned down to one form or medium, though staples have emerged: delicate, slightly nervy pencil drawings, bright concentric patterns and, a kind of opposite, black holes or elisions.

There are also fragmentary texts with a confessional tone, and patchwork fabric pieces in Tracey Emin's idiom of amateur needlework. The willful diffuseness of her work, its casualness, its attentiveness to vulnerable psychological states, all align it with a distinct trend in contemporary art.

The Kerlin Gallery, which has a hard-earned reputation in the art world, is not known for taking on younger artists at the start of their careers, but Nolan is now on their books and her first solo show in their substantial space offers a chance to see her work in depth. And it must be said that the alternative, piecemeal nature of the installation, with its rough-hewn patchwork hangings and understated images, is something of a breath of fresh air in a venue more accustomed to polish and uniformity.

In the show, Portal Site, a free-standing arch in painted MDF, stands out for a couple of reasons. One, it has a smoother, more finished aesthetic than anything else on view, and two, given the sci-fi, new age connotations of the title, it serves as a symbolic entry point to Planet Nolan. Dreamy evocations of astronomical space, scale and bodies recur, but they remain expressly anchored to imaginative inner space, the domain of self-absorbed reflection.

The solipsistic, intense 11-minute DVD animation The Condition of Emptiness tells a story, in the form of epistolary text messages, of someone who has retreated into themselves, shunning language in any form, but needing to re-establish contact. It's compelling, but it is also telling of Nolan's work in general that the least interesting aspect of it is the visual. As with her tight pencil drawings, it is as if she is uneasy about displaying any great visual fair or facility, preferring reticence and awkwardness.

There is a therapeutic air to her watercolours of holistic patterns in rainbow colours and scrawled expressions of emotion, but are they quoting a language of therapeutic expression or simply employing it? Or, to put it another way, is artlessness more honest or revealing than artfulness? Not necessarily, one would have to say.