Winter Group Show, Molesworth Gallery

Sean Molloy, The Purlieu Man, oil on canvas, 90 x 120 cm; image courtesy the artist and Molesworth Gallery.

PLAYFUL TOPICS, SHARP colours and magnetic details run through a multitude of paintings in Molesworth Gallery’s Winter Group Show. One of the most striking works is Helen Blake’s Love is a Luxury, 2021. Solid colours are zig-zagged in blocks of pinks and purples, while creams and browns overlay detailed pattern that peeks through. Blake’s Awake in the Night hosts another prominent arrangement, revealing slits of bright and skinny forms. At first, it may seem this work shares properties with British artist, Bridget Riley’s geometric compositions; yet where Riley distorted perception through pattern, Blake deepens conversations between patterned forms.

Leaning into more figurative work, Gabhann Dunne’s A Child’s Pride depicts a floating stag. Gestural antlers are locked into a solid mass of white. Speckled with colours, the marks’ frozen movement is somehow faster that the eye can comprehend. Dunne’s Goldcrest and Dunnock are in a far corner of the space, both moving out from each other, as if spectacular in flight. Firework feathers are small in scale and proud in tone; a playfulness is here. Probably life-size, they are perched in position. It is easy to picture them flitting around the room or flying straight out of the window, to circulate Molesworth Street’s built environment.

A strong pairing of Gillian Lawler’s Edgeland III and Transition III holds firm in the space. Chequered skies are represented in both works, appearing as upside-down floors, a combination of interior and exterior realms. The compositions signify some form of a landscape, with green abstracted mountainous bases peaking a little off centre. Beams of light, almost volcanic, emerge. In Edgeland III, crisp, icy hues move upwards, while Transition III appears as a dystopian, Ballardian environment. Megan Burns’ Altered Space 0.28 and Altered Space 0.29 are hung as a pair between two windows. These sharp and angular works have a dynamic

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relationship, suggesting that they might suffer if separated.

A work that stands out as having a magical, secret ingredient is Sean Molloy’s The Witch of Endor (2020). Small in scale and precise in content, a figure points to a ghostly being. A temple in the background echoes Greek mythological scenes, found in the paintings of Baroque landscape artist, Claude Lorrain (c.1600-82). A couple of horizontal neon orange lines assert themselves amongst the painting. A potential third figure exists in traces of dots, as if about to vanish, or viewed while the complete image is waiting to load.

Mick O’Dea’s Sea Mist (2020) generates a horizontal band of cloud, demarking two seasons in one day. The sea mist is a veil providing a distinctive tone against the vivid mountain and clear skies. Another work of note is Maeve McCarthy’s Autumn Hydrangeas, whose colours are warm enough to make the scene glow – a tribute to autumn light without actually showing any sky.

Persona (2021) by Threadstories is the only photographic piece in a show of paintings. It depicts a subject wearing a wool-knitted mask with protruding tongue. What might be scary has, instead, a more humorous, soft and playful quality. Strong pinks and creams in the wool have an impressionist sensibility, and the close relationship between the human skin and wool is effective. In Shane Berkery’s almost illustrative work, The Rain and Everywhere Else, a figure holding an umbrella seems to inhabit an interior space – yet there are also suggestions of exterior. The polka dot umbrella is rendered flat; the dots follow a grid rather than echoing a curve. The title has a heaviness to it, and the figure seems to be carrying a weight of some kind.

Mollie Douthit presents three fantastic, small-scale paintings, shown together but strong on their own. Cake Aged 14, Cake Age 6 and Jewels are aerial view compositions, describing tabletop scenes. Cake Age 14 is a dark brown, sculptural offering, while Cake Age 6 has more buoyancy through decorations of colourful characters such as Ronald McDonald. Jewels shows a bowl of cereal with chopped banana, spoon in action and decorative motif on the bowl. While all three paintings depict something enjoyable to eat, there is a lingering sense of unforgiving isolation.

Group shows and seasonal exhibitions that bring together several practicing artists (in this instance, mostly painters) are a welcome reminder of the vibrant work happening in studios across Ireland. This selection of work makes me consider the moments when these artists must have seized the perfect light or worked until they stopped noticing time pass.

Jennie Taylor is an art writer living and working in Dublin.

Maeve McCarthy, Autumn hydrangeas, oil on linen, 60 x 70cm; image courtesy the artist and Molesworth Gallery. Shane Berkery, The rain and everything else, oil on canvas, 100 x 100 cm; image courtesy the artist and Molesworth Gallery.