ÉIMEAR O’CONNOR delights in Petters’ botanical creations and her exquisitely fine verre eglomisé paintings, while paying tribute to her subtle art of activism. Now based in Belfast, Anushiya Sundaralingam addresses her displacement and exile from Sri Lanka and confronts the similar journeys of millions of refugees in her art. ‘More than any other motif, the boat is Sundaralingam’s emblem, her attribute,’ writes ISABELLA EVANGELISTI. Multi-awardwinning war photographer Seamus Murphy has returned to his native Ireland to photograph ‘The Republic’, in which STEPHANIE McBRIDE finds that his ‘poetic visual sense’ captures ‘both the strange and the familiar’; and PETER MURRAY views an exhibition at the Royal Hibernian Academy featuring artists’ engagement with Irish bogs over the past sixty years. AIDAN DUNNE interviews artist Louise Neiland; JULIAN CAMPBELL charts the life and work of Dublin painter Joseph Malachy Kavanagh; and CIARA KERRIGAN highlights how art has been a companion and influence in poet Paul Durcan’s collections through the decades. TERENCE REEVES-SMYTH visits the romantic Florence Court in Co Fermanagh. Largely gutted by a fire in 1955, the house’s restoration by the National Trust is ‘one of the great success stories in the early history of building conservation in Ireland’; KATHRYN MILLIGAN considers the city street scenes and panoramas of artist Norah McGuinness; and ALISON FITZGERALD looks at some highly decorative gold and silver boxes from the 17th century to the early 19th century, created by craftsmen working in the narrow, cobbled streets of Dublin. Elsewhere in the edition, there’s CHRISTINA KENNEDY on Fergus Feehily; NIAMH NicGHABHANN COLEMAN on Seán Cotter; and ELLA DE BÚRCA on Seiko Hayase. Usual features include the Diary of Events, Art at Auction by JOHN P O’SULLIVAN and Design Portfolio by FRANCES McDONALD. There are book reviews by Angela Griffith, Dolores Kearney, Frank J Hall and Karl Kinsella. Finally, Cecily Brennan’s Circadian Man takes the front cover of the spring edition. The photograph is included in the survey exhibition of Brennan’s work at the Glucksman, which CRISTÍN LEACH finds ‘satisfyingly select’. Brennan’s exhibition, ‘Six Men’, is running concurrently at the Taylor Galleries in Dublin.
Born in Galway in 1955, now Dublin and Berlin based, Cecily Brennan has been exhibiting since the late 1970s and making art about pain for decades. Her exhibition, ‘Pressure’, at the Glucksman Gallery, pulls together several major works from the last twenty-five years, taking a laws-of-physics-style view of the theme: pain as a form of energy or force, and – in what feels like a neat nod to Newton’s third law of motion, pairing actions with equal and opposite reactions – pressure as a form of pain. It’s a theme rich in potential interpretations and one that has long been present in Brennan’s practice.
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Christian Dupont uncovers Belfast artist Eva McKee’s vision for achieving aesthetic resonance through Celtic patterns and Art Nouveau styling
Isabella Evangelisti views the work of Sri Lankan artist Anushiya Sundaralingam and finds in it hope and courage
Christina Kennedy considers artist Fergus Feehily’s recent exhibition, ‘Fortune House’
Seán Cotter creates arresting works of art that invite us to go beyond the image as spectacle, as Niamh NicGhabhann Coleman discovers
Ella de BÚrca considers recent works by artist Seiko Hayase, which have addressed themes of resilience in the face of rejection, addiction and discarded emotions
Peter Murray finds a renewed sense of urgency in artists’ interaction with Ireland’s bog landscapes
Seamus Murphy tells Stephanie McBride that, when photographing Ireland, he was looking for what often goes unnoticed and unrecorded, what moves and surprises him
Louise Neiland tells Aidan Dunne how colour is always central to the structure of her paintings
Éimear O’Connor finds focused intentions behind the verre églomisé paintings of Yanny Petters
Kathryn Milligan considers the cityscapes of artist Norah McGuinness, from her Baggot Street surrounds in Dublin to the Hudson in New York
Terence Reeves-Smyth visits the restored Florence Court in Co Fermanagh, an alluring country house that reflects and sympathises with its surroundings
Alison FitzGerald views an exhibition of ornamental gold and silver boxes, whose presentation and trade revealed the loyalties of those involved
Renowned Irish poet Paul Durcan has had a lifelong fascination with visual art, writes Ciara Kerrigan
William Fraher selects a painting of the celebrity greyhound Master McGrath and his trainer, James Galwey, from the Waterford County Museum collection
