random dublin stuff

Group show of kevin kavanagh was good, def worth it to see the Mark Swords paintings, the one called quilt made me crack up! Also, I had never heard of Margaret Corcoran before, one of hers was rubbish, the other great. I can't find the list of works so I can't remember which was which, but it was the smaller of the two, with a plaque-like shiny surface.

I would have more for this post, but once again pallas projects and mothers tankstation weren't open. Fair enough MT are showing a film twice a day so they're only open for showings, I should have checked it out, but I won't bother going back to Pallace Projects because I feel like a right dick waiting outside to be let in and then realising nobody's coming, again. its not exactly conveniently located.

Also, I'm gonna blog someday soon about my undying love for Agnes Martin, and my plans for a pilgrimage to her life that i'm paying for one cappuccino at a time working in a coffee shop, but I just wanna mention the Ellsworth Kelly - Agnes Martin - Seán Shanahan trio of paintings that are part of the current display of the permanent collection at Hugh Lane. I fucking amazing treat for me. It was a pretty great day all in all as I did manage to see the paintings in the Ross O'Donnell show I had to miss at Cross Gallery, they were stacked in the downstairs gallery and I had a rummage, I know I prolly shouldn't have but its not like they're old masters and it was totally worth it.

OLIVER COMERFORD @ KEVIN KAVANAGH

Okay so this isn't something I'd normally go for, and by the time I got here I was wet and cold and it was getting late and I still hadn't even made it to IMMA yet and I confess, I zipped around it pretty quickly. I like Kevin Kavanagh, its a really corporate looking building in a poncey development with a Radisson. It feels like a proper upmarket gallery, like a gagosian or something. The space itself is quite nice, its hard to define exactly but the office is there but not intrusive, the bit with the guestbook provides a little room to show a smaller intimate work and yet the inner gallery is a very versatile size.

Oliver Comerford, I'd never come across him before I think, seems to specialise in large photo-based paintings. Wait come back, this isn't some "ghosts of history" Luc Tuymans played out thing, and it doesn't play on the romance celluloid fetishism. It just reminds me of glancing out a bus window as the light starts to fade. There is a definite sense of Irish Countryside, Light, and a delicately and intricately structured casualness. Its not the most glamorous trick to pull off, and it seems unlikely to win him any kudos but then, Maureen Gallace is an art star now so who knows. Anyway this was nice and I'm glad I saw it, even if I didn't care too much when I was there.

MARK SWORDS @ KEVIN KAVANAGH

Mark Swords latest show at Kevin Kavanagh, according to the blurb: "displays an increasingly intuitive engagement with various approaches to painting and art making." What emerges at the show, rather than a ludic free-wheeling playfulness, rather a wondrous enchantment with a sort of playful dissection. Motifs from manky bits of carpet and fabric are carefully dissected and rearticulated through paint, collage, embroidery etc. A rich awkardness pervades the show, which feels like the perspiration of a painter realising in front of you how tricky the project he has set for himself as he teases out the pictorial strands that comprise the various paintings on show (his literate yet neurotic style also provides a brilliant foil for the few flashes of wanton bravura!)



Mark Swords - Carpet

The first painting that welcomes you obliquely is Carpet, which like all the other pieces on show is of modest size. Riffing on tension between the pattern of a patch of carpet and a Heilmann-esque zig-zagging design, Swords interrelates each element of the painting in such a brittle agitated way, the painting teeters on the brink of resolution and as such provides an excellent point of entry for a show that creates more itches than it scratches.