Art

This week’s visual art highlights

Thomas Brezing, Clare Gallagher and contemporary art from Germany

Still from The Lost Photographs of Alfred H by Ronan McCrea, 2005 – ongoing, projected 35mm slide

Aidan Dunne's face
Aidan Dunne
Sat May 5 2018 - 05:00

Out Too Far (Wishing Too Many Things) Thomas Brezing. Custom House Studios Gallery, The Quay, Westport, Co Mayo. Until May 13th customhousestudios.com

From making big, busy, involving paintings, Thomas Brezing moved effectively into installation. He hasn’t given up painting (there’s painting, print, drawing and film in this show), but he has expanded further with an environmental sculpture, made with recycled materials and resembling the skeletal remains of a beached sea creature. “I look at what society consumes, values, de-values and discards and create a kind of vigil for this intolerable conglomeration of human detritus.”

Out Too Far by Thomas Brezing, sculptural installation 2017. Photograph: Davey Moore. Custom House Gallery

Future Perfect Contemporary art from Germany. The Model, Home of the Niland Collection, the Mall, Sligo. Until July 1st themodel.ie

Is it back to the future? As in the past perfect tense. Or a chance of change for the better? A look at the work of 16 German artists – films, photographs, sculptures, objects, painting, and collages – with an eye to what their work says about the future in a time of flux. Curated by Angelika Stepken and Philipp Ziegler.     An Act of Hospitality can only be Poetic Highlanes Gallery, Laurence St, Drogheda, Co Louth. Until June 30 highlanes.ie In curating a group show anchored to notions of hospitality, Linda Shevlin and Aoife Ruane, draw on a text by theorist Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi referencing Derrida, Auden and Yeats, highlighting the minefield that extends between ideas of identity and belonging, and hospitality. The title is from Derrida, and the 12-artist line-up is really good.

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Double Take Collections and context. Lewis Glucksman Gallery, UCC, Cork Until July 8th glucksman.org

Recreations of installations by a number of artists previously seen at the Glucksman, including Brian O’Doherty (as part of the year-long sequence of shows devoted to his work) but also look out for Amanda Coogan, Martin Healy and many more. Also showing are works by those same artists held in the UCC art collection.

Detail from Brian O’Doherty, Untitled, 2011, Intaglio print, UCC Art Collection. Double Take, Glucksman Gallery

Verges Clare Gallagher. Golden Thread Gallery, 84-94 Great Patrick St, Belfast Until June 30th goldenthreadgallery.co.uk

Clare Gallagher’s photographs “examine the potential for everyday resistance” through studying the tactics and success of weeds, which are compelled to challenge and outwit human schemes of order and control. She admires their autonomy and ingenuity and proposes them as a model of an alternative approach to the world around us.