• Picture This: Your National Visual Arts Guide – Reflection

    November 16, 2016 - By 

    2016 has been proposed as a year of reflection for the island of Ireland. While the main focus of this reflection has been channelled towards the centenary of the two conflicts that dominated Ireland – The 1916 Easter Rising – and Europe – The Battle of the Somme – it has also instigated a broader societal reflection on the current state of play of this and many other nations; as well stirring a personal reflection of our own past and familial history. This process is set to continue over the next few years as the centenary of many events that…

  • Picture This: Your National Visual Arts Guide – Time

    October 24, 2016 - By 

    Mankind has always will be obsessed with time. How long does anything take? When will something happen? We use it as a yardstick for task and events. As a society we’re enthralled by time-travel, constantly preoccupied with how long things take to do and get to. We’ve even coined the phrase ‘time immemorial’ to indicate how long things have been the way there are – it’s July 6th 1189 in case you were curious. Time is a revisionary tool by which we revisit the past and judge previous actions, comparing and contrasting them to now – they same time heals…

  • Primer: Mairead O’hEocha – Blackbirds in the Garden of Prisms

    October 21, 2016 - By 

    I was first introduced to the work of Mairead O’hEocha a little over a year ago, being late to considerably large and entirely justified bandwagon. What initially drew my attention was the completely personal and selfish connection I felt to her series Home Rules. These paintings depicted scenes and locations O’hEocha had encountered during her daily commute from Dublin to Gorey, where she taught in Gorey School of Art. Sure I had seen depictions of the rural town and surrounding countryside of my youth before but not anything like this. Her style and eye evolved further in 2011’s via An…

  • Picture This: Your National Visual Arts Guide – Narrative

    October 11, 2016 - By 

    Most exhibitions, in fact most artistic presentations be they albums, books or films, rely on and in most cases are defined by the strength of the narrative that exists or is absent from their presentation. They ensure an audience is guided through the work and suitably poked in the right direction when needed or left to surmise when required. While this idea of a structural narrative is almost universally present in outputs, it’s realisation and presence can be a diverse as the types of works it links and flows between. It can seen conjoining two distinct and seemingly opposing stories…

  • Picture This: Your National Visual Arts Guide – Ties

    September 27, 2016 - By 

    Among its definitions by the Oxford English Dictionary, alongside ‘a strip of material worn round the collar‘ and ‘a game in which the scores are level’, ties is defined as ‘a thing that unites or links people’. It is this third definition that can be best used to describe the exhibitions, artworks and people that feature in this edition of The Thin Air’s Picture This. In Dublin we see the latest show by Willie Doherty which discusses the unified history of two separate places and how this, via the 1916 Rising and later republicanism, has now become part of the…

  • Picture This – Your National Visual Arts Guide: Culture Night 2016: Dublin

    September 15, 2016 - By 

    Ireland’s annual night of culture is upon us again this Friday as her galleries, museum, studios and a host of others cultural hotspots open their doors for a night of exhibitions, demonstrations and insights. Culture Night 2016 sees over 3,000 events take place across the whole island, and what started out as a capital only event 10 years ago has now spread to 40 towns and cities across the all of Ireland. Dublin sees a host of music gigs, gallery openings, late night museums and open houses with events taking place across the city until 11pm. As always Culture Night…

  • Picture This – Your National Visual Arts Guide: Collection

    September 13, 2016 - By 

    Collections come in many sizes, outputs and forms. They can be collated by the similarity in object or output, they can also be defined by a universal signifier such as a time, artist or theme. In this edition of The Thin Air’s Picture This we see this idea manifested in four of its many tropes. In Wexford we see a collection of national and international artists explore the idea of a residency and it’s impact on an artist’s practice. Galway also presents us a collection of artists, this time all of the Finnish and all of them discussing the same…

  • Picture This: Your National Visual Arts Guide – Journeys

    August 30, 2016 - By 

    Journeys come in many sizes, shapes and forms. They can be physical, they can be metaphorical, in truth they can be anything. The four shows covered in this edition of Picture This represent four journeys the artists have taken along the way to the final show hosted in each gallery. We see a physical journey in VISUAL Carlow as Enda McCarthy retraces the steps barges took as he travels from Dublin to Carlow. In Dublin we see IMMA’s journey over the last 10 years as she expands her collection in the face of financial adversity. Katrina Palmer takes her audience…

  • Primer: Steven Maybury

    August 29, 2016 - By 

    Steven Maybury’s latest shows, Anicca and Dukkha, highlight an emerging artist whose practice is evolving and diversifying in the most interesting of fashions. In this edition of Primer Aidan Kelly Murphy sits down to chat about his work, influences and plans for the future. Did you always have an interest in the arts and want to pursue a life as an artist, or was it something that evolved naturally? It’s a strange one because I grew up with my father being a picture framer so I was always surrounded by artworks. I used to work with him cleaning the artists’…

  • Creative Rubbish: Meet Dublin artist Rob Crane

    August 25, 2016 - By 

    One of many Irish creatives being championed by our friends at BeKreativ, Rob Crane is a Dublin based artist working in various mediums but particularly with found objects such as cans, creating unique one-off pieces of sculpture art titled ‘pissheads’ and what he describes as ‘original creative rubbish’. He chats to us about what drives his artistic processes and his plans for the future. How did you get interested in art and where did it begin? I became interested in art and stuff mainly from 80s and 90s cartoons and movies. I would draw the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles characters…