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Overwintering on the Moon is the title of an exhibition by Beatrice O’Connell at Taylor Galleries in Dublin until February 17. These new mixed media works examine bionomic behaviour and interconnectivity in the face of the climate crisis and includes monochrome images of bees.
Taylor Galleries has announced the death artist Michael Cullen. Acknowledged as one of the pre-eminent Irish painters of his generation, he was born in Kilcool, Co. Wicklow in 1946 and studied painting at the Central School of Art and Design, London and Brighton School of Art before returning to Ireland to complete his education at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin in the early 1970s. He moved abroad for several years and travel remained an enduring passion: the vibrant palette he employed reveals the influence of time spent in hotter climes, particularly Mexico, North Africa and Spain. His use of bright, clean, saturated colour is emphasised by accents of brilliant white, and his paintings and prints populated by an eclectic crew of cowboys, elephants, circus performers, bullfighters, infantas and camels.
Michael Cullen exhibited in Ireland and further afield and has been represented by Taylor Galleries since the mid-1990s. A member of Aosdána and the Royal Hibernian Academy his work is included in many notable private collections, as well as the public collections of the National Gallery of Ireland; the Hugh Lane Gallery; IMMA; The Arts Council; Trinity College Dublin; The Ulster Museum, Belfast; Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI); AIB; Bank of Ireland and the Berlin Senate.
Taylor Galleries announced the death today of long-term gallery artist Janet Mullarney RHA. She died at her home in Italy early this morning following a long illness. Acclaimed as one of the foremost sculptors of her generation, Janet was born in Dublin in 1952 and left for Italy as a young woman, studying at the Accademia di Belle Arti (1970-74) and Scuola Professionale di Intaglio (1982-83) in Florence. She divided her time between Ireland and rural Tuscany for the rest of her life.
Taylor in a statement said Mullarney’s practice was defined by a material bravura that saw her combine bronze, foam, glass, rubber, papier maché, textiles, terracotta, plaster, wax, to form idiosyncratic figurative works that interrogate the human condition. Simultaneously playful, purposeful, experimental and elusive, her sculptures and their meanings, like Janet herself, defy easy categorisation. Instead, they represent a singular artistic vision, the distillation of a life’s work.
Janet Mullarney exhibited her work extensively in Ireland and abroad, and she has been represented by Taylor Galleries since the 1990s. A member of Aosdána and the Royal Hibernian Academy, in addition to numerous grants and funding awards she received a Pollock Krasner Award (1998), the Irish-American Institute’s O’Malley Art Award (2005), RHA Sculpture Award (2008) and RUA Perpetual Sculpture Award (2009). A major exhibition of new work, My Mind’s i, travelled to several Irish venues in 2015-16, and a retrospective survey show, Then and Now: Janet Mullarney, was presented at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 2019. A catalogue raisonné of her work edited by Mary Ryder and Catherine Marshall was published by Irish Academic Press last year.
There is a selection of work by gallery and invited artists at the Summer Group Show at the Taylor Galleries on Dublin’s Kildare St. It features work by Martin Gale, Diarmuid Breen, William Crozier, Makiko Nakamura, Charles Tyrrell, Melita Denaro, Peter Burns, Anne Madden, Louise Neiland, Pat Harris, John Doherty, Beatrice O’Connell, Colin Harrison, Michael Cullen, Alex Sadkowsky, Jane O’Malley, Brian Henderson, George Potter, T.J. Maher, Seán McSweeney, Danny Osborne, William Crozier, Patricia Burns, Brian Bourke, Jill Dennis, Mary Lohan, Micheal Farrell, Martin Healy, James O’Connor and Janet Mullarney. It is now open and runs to September 7.
Patricia Burns, Eastwards 2, 2016
Dublin Paintings is the title of an exhibition by Patricia Burns at the Taylor Galleries in Dublin from April 1-23. The artists’s interest lies in the hidden narrative in overlooked or changing parts of the built landscape. Her paintings often focus on specific places, most notably the in-between spaces of suburbs and ring-roads. Tomas McCarthy has said of her work that it “speaks to us from the twilight zone of remembrance and exile. Her haunting images are a technical triumph. The subject matter and the handling of it is unique and highly disciplined. Anyone who sees her work will be impressed by its uncompromising vision, its certainty of home-comings, its prodigious promise of a definition of home that transcends geography and crosses generations.”
Born in Dublin, Burns studied Fine Art at Dublin Institute of Technology and Crawford College of Art + Design, Cork. She has shown regularly in the RHA Annual Exhibition as an invited artist and has exhibited in the Summer Exhibition at London’s Royal Academy several times. Her work is in corporate and private collections throughout Ireland and the public collections of AIB, AXA Insurance, Ballinglen Arts Foundation, NUI Galway, and the OPW / State Art Collection.
Sean McSweeney
Sean McSweeney, the featured artist at the Taylor Galleries annual Winter Group Show in Dublin, celebrates his 80th birthday this month. The exhibition showcases work by McSweeney and invited artists. Born in Dublin in 1935 and self-taught as a painter his work has long been rooted in the tradition of Irish landscape painting that stretches back to the 1800’s and beyond. Consistently drawn to the characteristic “horizontality” of the bogland, sea fields and flat expanses of shoreline that surround his home on the Sligo coast, he returns repeatedly to the same subjects, painting them in various lights and through changing seasons. His work featured in the first Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1962. Cecil King saw his work and recommended him to Leo Smith at the Dawson Gallery. He had his first solo show with the Dawson Gallery in 1965 and has been represented by Taylor Galleries since its establishment in 1978. Sean McSweeney has exhibited extensively in Ireland and abroad and is an honorary member of the Royal Hibernian Academy and a member of Aosdána. His work is represented in major public and corporate collections nationwide as well as private collections in Ireland, the UK, Europe and North America. The exhibition at Taylor runs until January 30, 2016.
John Doherty 'The Odd Couple (Open for Petrol)', 2010
John Doherty, 'Morris', 2010
John Doherty, 'The Fruit & Veg Van', 2011,
