Art

Working with concrete: This week’s visual arts highlights

Eva O’Leary holds a mirror up to teenagers, and a group exhibition looks at surveillance

Some Concrete Possibilities is at the Library Project in Dublin

Aidan Dunne's face
Aidan Dunne
Sat Jan 12 2019 - 05:00

SOME CONCRETE POSSIBILITIES
The Library Project, 4 Temple Bar, Dublin. Until January 1st blackchurchprint.ie
Curated by Siobhan Mooney, winner of Black Church Print Studio Emerging Curator Award 2019, Some Concrete Possibilities considers the role of chance in the formation of an artwork at every stage of the process. The artists included are Cara Farnan, Garreth Joyce, Helen MacMahon and Lee Welch.

SPITTING IMAGE
Eva O'Leary. The Butler Gallery, The Castle, Kilkenny. Until March 3rd butlergallery.com
Previously unseen work from Eva O'Leary's award-winning photographic series Spitting Image. The series consists of portrait photographs of American teenage girls in Happy Valley, aka State College Pennsylvania. The twist is that the subjects were photographed through a two-way mirror, as they regard their own reflections. A video projection records the preparatory process.

CONTESTED TERRITORIES
Conor O'Grady. Custom House Gallery, The Quay, Westport, Co Mayo. January 17th-February 10th customhousestudios.ie
Works arising from a residency at the former psychiatric hospital which now houses the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, Castlebar. It is, O'Grady points out, not untypical as a re-purposed institution with a troubled past. Collectively, such buildings are a reminder of how Church and State treated the most vulnerable members of society.

BEYOND & BETWEEN
Markus Davies. Linenhall Arts Centre, Linenhall Street, Castlebar, Co Mayo. Until February 16th thelinenhall.com
Markus Davies' quietly disorientating paintings stem from the shapes, colours, textures and mysteries of the urban environment as a complex of interacting, overlapping, dynamic spaces and processes, from micro to macro.

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SURVEILLÉ·E·S
Group exhibition. Solstice Arts Centre, Railway Street, Navan, Co Meath. Until March 1st solsticeartscentre.ie
Curator Nora Hickey's group exhibition originated in the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris. With work by Karl Burke, Alan Butler, Willie Doherty, Roseanne Lynch, Colin Martin, Ian Wieczorek and others, the show considers a world of ubiquitous, visible and invisible surveillance, with an emphasis on the era of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.