Art

Mary Swanzy arrives in Cork, and the other best exhibitions this week

See meditations on environmental catastrophe or relics from raving in Dublin

Mary Swanzy, ‘Portrait of Gertrude Jekyll’, private collection

Aidan Dunne's face
Aidan Dunne
Sat Mar 23 2019 - 05:00

Mary Swanzy: Voyages

Crawford Art Gallery, Emmet Place, Cork. Until June 3rd (crawfordartgallery.ie)

The Mary Swanzy retrospective reaches the Crawford, where some of her best work is normally to be found. While it is well worth seeing, especially for those best pieces by a pioneering Irish modernist, what disappoints about the exhibition is that no startling new discoveries emerge and the artist’s limitations are made all the more obvious.

Monumental

Holly Walsh, ‘Oil study of Godafoss’, oil on paper, Irish Architectural Archive

Holly Walsh. Paul Kane Gallery @ the Irish Architectural Archive, 45 Merrion Square, Dublin. March 28th–April 6th (closed March 30th/31st)

Holly Walsh is a recent Student of the Year-winning graduate from the Crawford School of Art and Design. The work in this show arises from a residency in Iceland and is her response to the extraordinary landscapes she encountered there, landscapes she observed as “both structure and chaos”, where everything is in a state of transition, “fast or slow”. But, oddly enough, she reckons the challenging terrain helped her “to make sense of everything”.

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The New State

Hilary Kinahan, ‘Barn Series #3’, Graphic Studio Gallery

Graphic Studio Gallery, off Cope Street, Temple Bar, Dublin. Until April 6th (graphicstudiodublin.com)

You may have seen the National Gallery of Ireland’s excellent exhibition on Irish painter-etchers from 1880-1930 (if not you should). This companion piece, chosen by that show’s curators, Dr Angela Griffith and Anne Hodge, highlights work by 16 contemporary printmakers who have taken up etching within the last five years.

Clare Langan

Detail of ‘The Winter of 13 Storms’, © Clare Langan 2017

The Dock, St George’s Terrace, Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim. Until May 11th

Neva Elliot (artist and manager of Crash Ensemble) curates a show displaying Langan’s A Film Trilogy, plus the Irish premiere of The Winter of 13 Storms. Langan envisages aspects of our world post-environmental catastrophe in slow meditations on landscape – from utterly alien to worryingly familiar – in films that are, equally, soundscapes. She has worked with many interesting contemporary composers and musicians.

The Last Great Album of the Decade

An image from ‘The Last Great Album of the Decade’, The LAB Gallery, Dublin

Anne Maree Barry, Declan Clarke, Alan Phelan, Clíodhna Timony and The Brian McMahon Archive (Brand New Retro). The LAB Gallery, Foley Street, Dublin. Until May 12th dublincityartsoffice.ie

There’s a wistful, elegiac note to the title of curators Pádraic E Moore and Sheena Barrett’s show “celebrating the musical relics and souvenirs of the subculture”, put together in association with MusicTown. It includes items covering ’90s gigsand Dublin raves, and goes from zines to photography. Plus associated events at the Music Library in the Ilac centre.