New takes on familiar images

The human presence has always been at the centre of Louis le Brocquy's work, so it is appropriate that a major exhibition of his watercolours at the Taylor Galleries, spanning nearly four decades, should take Human Images as its title. Last year le Brocquy was the recipient of the first Glen Dimplex Award for a sustained contribution to the arts in Ireland, a fitting acknowledgement of an illustrious career. One might expect that, now in his eighties, he would slow down and rest on his laurels.

So it is gratifying, if a little daunting, to see that so much of the work in Human Images is new. Not only is it new, it is also substantial. He has, for example, revisited the Being series that he initiated in the 1950s. But rather than simply reprising old ideas, he has thoughtfully reapplied his talents to them, coming up with some fine images. While he is best known for his spectral portraits of literary figures, including Yeats, Joyce and Beckett, incarnated in head studies that celebrate imaginative potential, his studies of the body are as impressive. They range from evocations of the spine or body orifices that are every bit as spectral as the ghostly heads, to compelling images of embodiment and physicality.

These weighty, sculptural studies are surprising given le Brocquy's subtlety of touch, his liking for delicate washes and off-whites. His trick is to convince us that the being, the person is there, without having to belabour the point. It's the mark of a fine painter.

In Shades of Time, the exhibition by the Swiss photographer Annelies Strba at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, three synchronised slide projectors work their way repeatedly through 240 images, to the accompaniment of a rhythmic, ambient soundtrack. The images change in unison every eleven seconds. They are, for the most part, unremarkable family snapshots and views of buildings and countryside. Some of the pictures do have a more pronounced individual presence, but by and large the project depends on the cumulative effect of the imagery, as we begin to discern patterns and connections. These have to do with people and places: the same figures against the same backgrounds over a period of years. Domestic intimacy is set within the context of larger, more impersonal rhythms in the world outside.

In trying - and generally succeeding - to convey an overall sense of life lived through the accumulation of detail, it recalls Another Way of Telling, Jean Mohr and John Berger's bid to create an alternative, photographic biography. Strba's husband is Bernard Schobinger, a craftsman and designer. His gold bangle inscribed with the Buddhist "Heart Sutra', which "attempts to formulate the very heart of perfect wisdom" forms part of the exhibition. Its inclusion is intuitive and fortuitous: there is no logical reason for it. But it seems appropriate.

At the Hugh Lane Gallery, LUSCIOUS is the latest incarnation of an ongoing project by Finola Jones. From the doorway of one of the side galleries, you can see over 700 figurines arranged in an orderly pattern on the opposite wall inside. They are all cheap and cheerful dolls garnered from pound shops and bargain bins at home and abroad. They range from religious statues to pop culture icons like Batman. Like Strba's Shades of Time, Luscious hinges on the sheer mass of material on display. Here the rationale is to provide a survey of popular culture in terms of such cheap artefacts - on a global scale. By insinuating garish, ephemeral kitsch into the sacrosanct setting of the museum, with its aura of permanence and expense, Jones is also questioning assumptions of cultural value. But, perhaps surprisingly, the work's main appeal lies in the level of skill and ingenuity that goes into the production of the figurines themselves.

Gerry Caffrey was a painter who worked in Temple Bar Studios from 1988 until the time of his sudden death in 1997. A number of his fellow artists have organised a small memorial exhibition, together with a very good colour catalogue, which together form a fitting tribute to him. He was a bold colourist who relished the wallop of pure reds and yellows, but he also had a feeling for a much more muted, earthy palette, which came out in his later work, and for texture. Almost invariably he structured his pictures in terms of a single, central motif against a ground. Even before he worked in the Botanic Gardens on the Artcore project he had explicitly developed the idea that this ground might be a generative medium. From first to last his output is characterised by its honesty and directness.

Louis le Brocquy: Human Images continues at Taylor Galleries until Saturday next. There is a website at www.le-brocquy.com. Annelies Strba: Shades of Time is at the Douglas Hyde Gallery until January 30th. Luscious by Finola Jones is at the Huge Lane Gallery until January 25th. Gerry Caffrey: A Memorial Exhibition is at the Temple Bar Gallery until Friday next.