PREVIOUS EXHIBITION
28.06.24 - 25.07.24
The Fair
Leanne McDonagh
Press Release
Leanne McDonagh
‘The Fair’
28th June - 25th July 2024
The Katie Lindsay Gallery is delighted to present nine works by the artist Leanne McDonagh. McDonagh’s reputation as an exciting emerging Irish artist has been growing steadily for some years now having already exhibited in Irish Museum of Modern Art, IMMA and the Glucksman, Cork
McDonagh occupies a unique position as a college-educated artist from the Travelling community. These days she is from a tiny village near Cork. With her art she likes to experiment with different methods. She tends to use several processes in one piece, piecing an image together, layer by layer. The majority of her work is photography but she also makes prints and drawings. One aspect of her photographic method is the use of a very slow shutter speed to capture distinct elements within a scene and she has become extraordinarily adept & skilled at her own technique.
Thematically, from 16, she was very aware of the unease and disparities between two communities here in Ireland - her own and settled people. Inside this context she captures fleeting moments in an abstract way that engage the viewer in an enquiry as to what might actually be happening in the image. In this way, her work explores the perceived notions and mystery that surrounds her community, constructing beguiling narratives that aim to pique the viewer so that they might examine any stereotypes they may hold about the Travelling community.
Alternatively to current documentary style photography, that is often used to represent her community and in a bleak way, McDonagh looks to an older generation of artists like the work of Jack B Yeats, Louis Le Brocquy and Nano Reid, “artists who were influenced by our way of life and intrigued by the mystery and romantic notions of Travellers”.
Through exploring the vibrancy, warmth and aliveness of her own people, in her art, McDonagh successfully feedbacks to her community who they really are.
Artist and an educator Leanne McDonagh grew up on a halting site and gained first-hand experience of the prejudices and misconceptions that society has about Travellers. McDonagh attended Crawford College of Art and Design. She has exhibited nationally and internationally. She is the Traveller Education Coordinator for Cork Institute of Technology. In 2020 McDonagh illustrated the short story book “Why The Moon Travels” written by a fellow Traveller, Oein De Bhairduin.
PREVIOUS EXHIBITION
22.06.23—15.07.23
Drawing on MindScape
Shanti Panchal
The Katie Lindsay Gallery is excited to announce Shanti Panchal’s first exhibition in Ireland of 18 watercolours of varying sizes.
Panchal defines his painting technique: “I use watercolour on thick, rough paper; applying many layers; mixing colours directly on the paper, scratching and scraping.“
It’s a slow process resulting in textured, velvet-like surfaces.
With peerless craftsmanship the artist combines the old with the new citing influences from Indian miniaturist painting, Buddhist frescoes and medieval Christian icons; Mark Rothko’s large abstract colour fields and the candied backdrops of Francis Bacon.
Each work demonstrates a subtle blending of the poetic forces from two cultures; east and west; he combines different aesthetic values i.e. the symbolism of Jain miniature paintings with western art styles like abstract expressionism.
In the larger works his figures occupy empty theatrical spaces. A vacant chair or a bulk of a wall serve, not only as pictorial devices, to point to something; an absence maybe or ‘a void.’ All this conjuring urgent, timely questions about our identities, nationhood and sense of belonging: Where is home? Do we carry our homes with us? Does home reside in our imagination?
Panchal was born in 1951 in North Gujarat, Mesar ; a small village in India. In 1978, after completing five years of study at the Sir JJ School of Art in Mumbai where he trained in western art and Indian miniatures, he won a British Council award to study for two years at the Byam Shaw School of Art in the UK.
His talents were soon acknowledged. 1980’s London was entering a radical mood and with the New Labour government’s drive to be inclusive he was commissioned by the GLC ( Greater London Council ) to make a pro-diversity mural celebrating Asian and Black culture alongside (Turner Prize winner 2017 / Tate Modern 2022) Lubiana Hamid, Gavin Jantjes and Keith Piper ; only Panchal’s mural survives.
In 2022 a second major public art work was commissioned from the artist by Art on The Underground , TFL for Brixton station and launched on the 17th of November 2022.
Shanti Panchal is a recipient of many prizes including the BP Portrait award in 1991, The prestigious John Moores Prize , twice, in 1989 and 2018 . He has been artist in residence at the British museum in 1994 and held solo shows at The Museum of Modern Art Oxford 1993, Pitzhanger Manor in 2000 and Chelmsford Museum 2007 and more recently with the Ben Uri 2020; to mention only a few.
PREVIOUS EXHIBITION
06.08.23—31.08.23
The Revolution is SOFT
Grace McMurray
Katie Lindsay Gallery is pleased to announce The Revolution is SOFT, an exhibition of new work by Grace McMurray.
McMurray’s highly personal practise involves traditionally female activities like sewing, knitting, weaving and patchwork. As the artist makes, stitches, knits and patches she doesn’t conceal her mistakes but emphasises them with very visible repairs. These are stories of individual and collective healing.
“Mending is about the journey travelled, not reinstating the impossible perfection of the new.”
A key piece in this exhibition is Facade; a damaged blue ceramic plate and a gift to the artist. McMurray draws on the Japanese practise of kintsugi and the plate is repaired with gold leaf. Kintsugi is the practise of repairing broken pottery with precious materials such as gold. As a philosophy, kintsugi is ‘an embracing’ of the flawed or the imperfect.
In a similar vein, many of the knitted works Field, Halfway There, Noise, Seamless & Verse, are created from the reverse side. The artist reveals the underside, the looser threads. It is through this process of uncovering and revealing that McMurray points to the worth and beauty in the seemingly worthless. At the same time she questions society’s expectations and the pressure to be a certain way. Themes of perfectionism are echoed again in the two pieces Nerves and Tarnished. Positioned opposite each other in the space, they allude to mirrors (they are the same size as mirrors) these two works appear to be made of a hard metal but are, in fact, painstakingly drawn with graphite pencil on waved paper.
Through these labour intensive ways of working and crafting, McMurray explores notions that the domestic space, where most female crafting historically took place, is inherently benign or passive.
Grace McMurray studied BA (Hons) Fine Art Sculpture, Wimbledon College of Art (2005-08). Selected Solo Exhibition: Woven Polyhedra, University of Ulster, Belfast (2018). Selected Group Exhibitions include: Irish Modernisms, CCA Derry 2021; Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (2019); Jerwood Drawing Prize, Jerwood Space, London (2015); Synthetic Aesthetics, Leitrim Sculpture Centre, Manorhamilton, Ireland (2012); Watershed, Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre, Hong Kong (2010).
Awards include: Turner Prize 2021 with Array Collective.