There are two kinds of work in Marcella Reardon's show at the Jo Rain Gallery, laser colour prints and big, collage drawings. They are very different in scale and appearance, but they have in common an enhanced appreciation of everyday things. There is a hint that a sojourn in India, where things casually discarded in the wasteful West are prized and used, prompted her close appraisal of the objects and props we take for granted. It's not just a question of utility, though. When she marshals her materials, whether precious or worthless, durable or ephemeral, there is something celebratory and reverential about the images she makes.
She arranges the objects themselves on the glass plate of a photocopier and records them directly. The effect is photographic but strangely, oddly so, and it can be magical. Looking at them, there seems no reason why the same technique shouldn't have been used to make work on a larger scale. As it is, each piece is framed like a conventional little picture, which probably makes practical and economic sense but limits the scope.
The big, beautifully made, delicately coloured collaged drawings make you wish she had extended the colour copy format. An air of ritual and ceremony attends her Naked Bride. The sacrificial implication is reinforced by the presence, in a corresponding drawing, of the bride's resplendent white dress waiting for her. As the mass of collaged details suggest, it's more than just a dress: an entire life of duty and routine domesticity is stitched into the symbolism of the ceremony. But the drawing is not just a critique of gender roles, it's genuinely celebratory as well.
There are four artists in the Rubicon Gallery's annual Wet Paint show. The idea is that it serves as an introductory platform for young painters, given that institutional outlets are these days less inclined to highlight painting. American-born Alice Lyons makes very fine, sensitive work. She has one remarkable piece, Untitled (Birch) which is like glimpsing a section of birch bark on a misty morning.
Anne Stahl makes capable textural paintings with varying surface finishes. They are dark, brooding compositions with landscape associations. There's a good idea at the heart of Gemma Browne's paintings of dolls, and it has to do with their darker side, with what they symbolise and what we read into them. But the work falls down at the level of execution. It is reminiscent of Marlene Dumas's ink drawings, but lacks her fluency. The fourth exhibitor, Alison Pilkington, paints large, gestural abstracts, and does so very convincingly. She uses strong colours with sound colour sense, and builds her compositions with a sure touch, using very broad brush-strokes.
As a batik artist, Bernadette Madden inevitably finds herself inhabiting that contested terrain between art and craft. Silver Bells And Cockle Shells, her new show at the Hallward Gallery, certainly aims to be more art than craft. As the title suggests, it's a thematic affair, inspired by her garden. Informal borders packed with flowers and foliage seem tailor-made for the medium, the one drawback being that to build up the requisite layers and intensities of colour is extremely labour intensive. As with Reardon's colour prints, it's not altogether clear that the batiks are happiest as framed images, though the more conventional wall-hanging format has strong craft associations. Madden achieves remarkable effects in pieces such as Dusky Poppies, Evening Acacia and Winter Tamarisk. Her work is unashamedly decorative and generally more effective on a smaller scale. Somehow, when she moves up in size, the imagery seems to thin out. is Ni Fhaolain's Superwoman carved and painted wood sculptures are an attractive amalgam of traditional means and humorous, irreverent commentary. They have something in common with the work of Janet Mullarney. There's humour as well in the work of the other sculptor, Ray Lawlor, who makes witty, improvised constructions of found and assembled objects.
Sligo's annual National Small Works Competition, Iontas, is currently on the Dublin leg of its three venue tour, at the RHA Gallagher Gallery. French artist Christine Crozat and Crawford Gallery curator Peter Murray selected the painting, drawing and print sections, and sculptor John Behan chose the sculpture.
It's in the nature of Iontas to be a mixed bag, and so it proves. This year there is the impression of a lot of work that's neither very good nor very bad, which leads to a certain dullness, an impression that isn't entirely fair. For there is a reasonable proportion of good work, including Judy Hamilton's appropriately subdued Summertime, Peter Morgan's cibachrome Site Specific pieces, Joe Butler's steel Lovers, and paintings by Shane Synnott, Mike Fitzharris, Clifford Collie, Tim Goulding, Bernadette Kiely and Jill Dennis. Sculpture and print are well represented, with a large photographic element falling into the print category.
