Patrick Hall, Mary Ronayne, Anishta Chooramun

Since the 1980’s Patrick Hall has exhibited widely both in Ireland and Internationally. His work has been hugely influential on generations of younger Irish artists. He has travelled extensively, however his most adventurous and rewarding journey has been an interior one, testing the parameters of the human psyche and the imagination. He has experimented with choreography and contemporary dance in relation to drawing and painting. The paradox and enigma at the heart of his work he sees as the paradox of aloneness at the heart of totality and infinity.

“Painting is always a form of communication. We're not painting in a vacuum. We're painting because we're a member of the human race and this is our deepest way of communication and of receiving response. It's deeper than any other; it's deeper than sex; it's deeper than speaking; it's deeper than thought, because it is beyond thought. It is actually physical, and it's the physicality of the painting which connects me to other people, not just the painting, but its being. It's a mutual acknowledgement of our common physicality and fate but the viewer is a kind of limited word in painting, because a painting views the viewer as much as the viewer views the painting.” (Patrick Hall from an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist)

Mary Ronayne collects imagery from a wide variety of sources and eras and works from divergent histories and narratives. There is a playful Hogarthian quality to her painting and always the suggestion that behind the farcical lies satire and allegory. She creates an illusion of blithe, cartoonish characters, which are re-telling tales and influenced by vaguely familiar references. Her preferred choice of material is gooey, enamel paint. She paints on irregular shaped surfaces which are exhibited as singular objects or clusters, hung in layers over wall paintings and on colourful grounds. When installed for exhibition, the varied subjects form a discordant and intriguing collection of works, which are familiar and domestic but which are not quite disclosing themselves. Renaissance imagery is positioned alongside reconstructed imagery of grand and ordinary domestic interiors, early Irish history and folklore clash with ‘ugly’ mid-20th century ceramics. Her work is highly influenced by her interest in literature.

Anishta Chooramun's work is informed by displacement and the ever-evolving aspects of identity. She is interested in our shared, common humanity and in how complex our reading of identity is. She removes representation of the human figure, wanting the viewer to only see the sculpture for what it is, and not linked to gender, ethnicity, and social class. Her works play with a number of forms working on flat and curvilinear planes, she introduces colour and renders the works in simple inexpensive materials. There’s a nod to constructivist principles within the work and it makes other recent art historical references. She often uses a simple rectangular form, one of the most common geometric shapes we encounter. The rectangle in this context is familiar and trusted; their right angles represent order, mathematics, rationality, and formality, they suggest conformity, peacefulness, solidity, security, and equality. Working in large scale, the works are at once powerful and open in their familiarity.