In and of Itself is an intergenerational presentation of abstraction, a style that came to the fore in the early decades of the 20th Century, heralding a democracy of the visual that claimed to usurp the art of the privileged of previous ages. While vital to the definition of Modernism by the mid-century, it was shuffled aside by other strategies, such as Pop Art and Conceptualism, that fed on recognisable images and narratives.
Yet abstraction has persisted as a valid vein of art making as this exhibition attests to. It is built on formal qualities dealing with shape, colour, geometry, materiality, scale, weight and gravity – more the algebra of seeing, than its arithmetic.
Artists: Elizabeth Archbold, Tinka Bechert, Helen Blake, Megan Burns, John Cronin, Ellen Duffy, Taffina Flood, Jane Fogarty, Richard Gorman RHA, Leah Hewson, Ronnie Hughes, Joanna Kidney, Fergus Martin, Sinéad Rice, John Noel Smith, Charles Tyrrell ARHA, Samuel Walsh, Corban Walker, Michael Warren RHA and Sarah Wren Wilson.
Image: Richard Gorman, Untitled for Dermot (3 Components: 1/3, 2/3, 3/3), 1994-2018, 240 x 400cm, Oil on linen, Courtesy of The Butler Gallery Collection.
