An argument driven effectively into abstraction

Visual Arts/Aidan Dunne: Felicity Clear's Dirty Pretty Things at the Rubicon Gallery takes the form of an installation of paintings.

That is, although there are more than 30 individual pieces, they are all but one arranged in a large, irregular cluster on the largest wall in the gallery. This group can be split up, but Clear intends the works to function communally, because she has stipulated that they can only be purchased in twos or more, and she has included several floral-patterned cut-outs in the overall arrangement.

The paintings certainly look good together. They share motifs and imagery and the artist's signature touch: a certain cool distance, surely related in part to her experience as a printmaker. And in this work, as before, she uses print, mostly in the form of what appears to be photo-silkscreen, in combination with paint. The analytical quality that comes across also has to do with her background in natural science, which she studied to degree level.

The paintings are fragmentary and overlapping. Motifs are repeated within and across pieces. There is a great deal of upbeat colour and imagery. Street names dominate the list of titles, and it is as if the streets are decked out for Christmas, all glitz and glitter. But it's more a festival of consumerism than religion. Various snippets of imagery and that Dirty Pretty Things point to a grubby tawdriness underlying the apparent glamour of bright lights and good cheer.

It's appropriate that the show's opening coincided with the launch of the Dundrum Town Centre, a retail complex that received a startling level of media coverage and seemed to mark or confirm the apotheosis of shopping in contemporary Irish life. All the more so given the ecumenical service that formed part of the opening ceremony, and the disclosure that one of the few culturally valuable local retail outlets, the Dundrum Bookshop, had been scornfully sidelined.

Clear is very specific about her imagery, the strings of decorative lights, the baubles and window dressing, but she also carries her argument over into abstraction very effectively. Through interaction and consistency of tone she generates a consistent mood, evoking a gaudy facade behind which something darker and more troubling abides. She does all this with great bravura and inventiveness and, piece by piece, the work is beautifully made. What clinches it, though, is the strength of her overall conception.

Alan Phelan has curated a small group show, Felons, at the Royal Hibernian Academy, one that is based on what seems at first to be an outrageous conceit. The five participating artists were invited solely on the basis that they "have names that sound like the name Phelan". Two further contributors, to a forthcoming catalogue, share the same distinction. They are Michel Peillon and Pelin Tan. The idea arose from Phelan's musing on the fact that the spell-checker in Microsoft Word proposes the term "felon" as a correction for his name.

Despite the foregoing, the show is not an ego-trip of any kind, more a practical exploration of the idea of making an exhibition on the basis of an arbitrary criterion, a bit like George Perec's feat in writing a novel without using the letter e.

Interestingly, Felons is not at all bad and functions easily as well as many a conventional group exhibition. There is even some correspondence between the exhibitors. Paul Ferman's brash photographs of domestic furniture and fittings incongruously cast adrift in leafy suburban settings are striking. Though it is not specified, it looks as if he documented material left for refuse collections. The strongest image is of furniture in an abandoned or burnt-out room. Marko Pelijhan's snazzy graphics and video presentation mimic the language of defence industry sales jargon with opposite, subversive intent. He proposes a hi-tech counter-surveillance device as a means of watching the watchers. It's well done.

Wolfgang Paalen is represented by a group of 1930s paintings, together with printed documentary material. The paintings are very competent surrealist compositions featuring the play of biomorphic forms. Hans-Peter Feldmann's collection of left shoes is a minor conceptual gesture. Yona Friedman's musings on contemporary architecture are engaging but let down by a sculptural installation that is heavy on logistics and light on content. In all, though, it's a lively, provocative show.

Cormac O'Leary's Nightlife at the Hallward Gallery features boldly coloured studies of interiors, plus a few figure and still life paintings. They are made in a vein of stylised representation. Forms are simplified, pushed toward underlying geometric structure. A lot of the work is bright, but it is also low key in the way O'Leary goes for a feeling of intimate spaces, carefully observed.

He is particularly strong on capturing a palpable sense of light falling in a room and, in some of the Barcelona pieces, of the contrast between the glare and brilliance of sunshine and the shaded interiors. As the show's title indicates, he is also drawn to views of the city by night, not in terms of bright lights but in the form of quiet networks of buildings defined mostly by moonlight. Almost every painting has a real spark of life about it and brings you into its world. It is an extremely likeable show.

Reviewed

Dirty Pretty Things, Felicity Clear, Rubicon Gallery until Mar 26 (01-6708055)

Felons, curated by Alan Phelan, Royal Hibernian Academy Gallagher Gallery until Mar 20 (01-6612558)

Nightlife, Cormac O'Leary, Hallward Gallery until Mar 10 (01-6621482)