When artist and cartoonist Tom Mathews opened his last show, Post Pop, two years ago in Tosca Restaurant it sold out rather quickly, so there was a number of prospective buyers looking rather anxious as they arrived for the opening of Odd Couples, Tom's latest exhibition, on Tuesday night. Not least of these was singer Gavin Friday who narrowly missed getting his first choice last time round and was determined to get a good look at what was on offer this time. In the end he plumped for a rather psychedelic number called "Barney and Betty".
The titles of all the paintings in Odd Couples are well known couples - "Frankie and Johnny", "Sid and Nancy", "Fred and Ginger" - but Mathews has put a slightly anarchic twist in the tail. Sid and Nancy are Sid James and Nancy Reagan while Frankie and Johnny is a portrait of Frank Sinatra and Johnny Lydon of the Sex Pistols. Not all of the identifications are quite so easy, though, and several of the guests on Tuesday night were enjoying themselves working out the connections.
Academic Ciaran Benson was very quick to identify one of the works on display - Benson and Hedges - a finely-rendered portrait of the man himself, bolstered on either side by some rather impressive bushes. Benson, who finished a hard-working stint as chairman of the Arts Council during the year, is looking forward to taking a year's sabbatical in the new year. Other guests and fans included artist Robert Ballagh who arrived with his daughter Rachel Ballagh, also an artist; John Hunt of the Hunt Museum who snapped up one of the works; artist Gwen O'Dowd; animator Tim Booth; artist Felim Egan; record producer Flood who has recently moved back to Ireland after stints in England and Russia with his partner Willow Burke, and Lorna Healy of NCAD. One friend of Mathews who couldn't make the exhibition was Neil Jordan; when the party moved round the corner to Grogan's pub they found the film director there, rather put out that his invitation never arrived.