‘Painting is place, and construction, a synthesis through layers; and abstraction another form, or expression, of displacement.’—Erin Lawlor 

An exhibition which aims to shine a light on current practices in abstract art through the work of four female artists, Irish or of Irish origin, and who are in direct dialogue with New York—Diana Copperwhite, Erin Lawlor, Helen O’Leary and Dannielle Tegeder. The exhibition, and accompanying symposium, is proposed as what might constitute a first chapter in a re-examination of aspects of contemporary Irish abstract art, a genre perhaps less usually associated with the visual arts in Ireland - and that despite a rich and centuries-old tradition of the use of form and pattern throughout Irish culture.

The four artists presented here are quite distinct in their work and approach—Copperwhite and Lawlor, and to certain extent Tegeder, mining the seam of traditional oil painting (although Tegeder’s practice has also long extended to drawing, wall-works, installation); while O’Leary’s three-dimensional wooden constructions reach from the sculptural to the almost immersive. Stylistically speaking, between them, these four artists run the full gamut from the hard-edge to the lyrical. And yet there are common themes that on second glance feed into all of their practices—(and that despite the more or less distended links, or distance, whether temporal or geographical of the protagonists from their native/ancestral land): explorations around a sense of place, but also translations of the musical, that might constitute the beginning of a key to a sense of cultural identity. 

Painting and sculpture provide, perhaps uniquely among the arts, the opportunity for a reclaiming of space, for the physical construction of a psychological construction, or reconstruction; and in this sense it is perhaps unsurprising to find that all of the artists involved, with their close experience, be it personal or transgenerational, of displacement, have in some way engaged with that. This is no doubt most immediately obvious in the work of Helen O’Leary—her work constitutes a literal—and constant—building and rebuilding, in direct reference to her young life in rural Wexford and the very real concern of rebuilding the family home. Dannielle Tegeder’s paintings also very clearly refer to the architectonic (a familial concern), refracted through what is at times a constructivist approach; she has also worked more specifically on the role of architecture, urban spaces, and utopian thinking.

Diana Copperwhite has often spoken of the way in which her work seeks to recreate a sense of the refraction of light so reminiscent of her childhood years in Limerick and on the west coast. The paintings are almost literally portals, a journeying through time/space that takes root to multiply outwards, through her interest in the online traveling, or mapping, she undertakes through the internet. Lawlor is a child of the diaspora, and her own repeated displacements have left her very aware of the notion of home, and homeland, as a psychological construct. Her work represents more generally a reconstruction/synthesis of place through the twin portals of memory, and the layered prism of the European and New York painting traditions. That fertile ground of cross-pollination between cultures, a well-known phenomenon of some of the richest moments in the history of the visual arts, can be read in the work of all of these artists: Copperwhite while discovering modernism in Ireland through the work of Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone, themselves protagonists of the School of Paris, very early on found herself in dialogue with the teachings of Hans Hofmann, and through him the painters of the New York School. There is also a freedom to be found in displacement, and in her work it allows that traveling between 20th century New York School, and the Spanish baroque of Goya or Velazquez. 

‘Painting is place, and construction, a synthesis through layers; and abstraction another form, or expression, of displacement.’—Erin Lawlor 

An exhibition which aims to shine a light on current practices in abstract art through the work of four female artists, Irish or of Irish origin, and who are in direct dialogue with New York—Diana Copperwhite, Erin Lawlor, Helen O’Leary and Dannielle Tegeder. The exhibition, and accompanying symposium, is proposed as what might constitute a first chapter in a re-examination of aspects of contemporary Irish abstract art, a genre perhaps less usually associated with the visual arts in Ireland - and that despite a rich and centuries-old tradition of the use of form and pattern throughout Irish culture.

The four artists presented here are quite distinct in their work and approach—Copperwhite and Lawlor, and to certain extent Tegeder, mining the seam of traditional oil painting (although Tegeder’s practice has also long extended to drawing, wall-works, installation); while O’Leary’s three-dimensional wooden constructions reach from the sculptural to the almost immersive. Stylistically speaking, between them, these four artists run the full gamut from the hard-edge to the lyrical. And yet there are common themes that on second glance feed into all of their practices—(and that despite the more or less distended links, or distance, whether temporal or geographical of the protagonists from their native/ancestral land): explorations around a sense of place, but also translations of the musical, that might constitute the beginning of a key to a sense of cultural identity. 

Painting and sculpture provide, perhaps uniquely among the arts, the opportunity for a reclaiming of space, for the physical construction of a psychological construction, or reconstruction; and in this sense it is perhaps unsurprising to find that all of the artists involved, with their close experience, be it personal or transgenerational, of displacement, have in some way engaged with that. This is no doubt most immediately obvious in the work of Helen O’Leary—her work constitutes a literal—and constant—building and rebuilding, in direct reference to her young life in rural Wexford and the very real concern of rebuilding the family home. Dannielle Tegeder’s paintings also very clearly refer to the architectonic (a familial concern), refracted through what is at times a constructivist approach; she has also worked more specifically on the role of architecture, urban spaces, and utopian thinking.

Diana Copperwhite has often spoken of the way in which her work seeks to recreate a sense of the refraction of light so reminiscent of her childhood years in Limerick and on the west coast. The paintings are almost literally portals, a journeying through time/space that takes root to multiply outwards, through her interest in the online traveling, or mapping, she undertakes through the internet. Lawlor is a child of the diaspora, and her own repeated displacements have left her very aware of the notion of home, and homeland, as a psychological construct. Her work represents more generally a reconstruction/synthesis of place through the twin portals of memory, and the layered prism of the European and New York painting traditions. That fertile ground of cross-pollination between cultures, a well-known phenomenon of some of the richest moments in the history of the visual arts, can be read in the work of all of these artists: Copperwhite while discovering modernism in Ireland through the work of Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone, themselves protagonists of the School of Paris, very early on found herself in dialogue with the teachings of Hans Hofmann, and through him the painters of the New York School. There is also a freedom to be found in displacement, and in her work it allows that traveling between 20th century New York School, and the Spanish baroque of Goya or Velazquez.