A Hybrid Account

20th March - 8th April 2006 :: Bank of Ireland Arts Centre, Foster Place, Dublin 2

Sean Healy :: 'to cause to remain' :: work on steel :: 2ft x 2ft

'A Hybrid Account' is an exhibition of new work from three Limerick based artists; Alan Boardman, Tom Fox and Sean Healy taking place in the Bank of Ireland Arts Centre from March 21st to April 8th 2006. All three are graduates of Limerick School of Art and Design. The show’s title is a reference to each of the artist’s approach to their chosen canvas as well as their subject matter.

Sean Healy’s highly evocative and brooding pieces are the result of a meticulous and demanding layering process of rusting metal and steel surfaces. He works acid into untreated surfaces by various methods including sanding, scratching, spraying, stencilling, painting and drawing. His works are a powerful manifestation of the transformative possibilities of chemicals and elements as they respond to the outer environment over time.

Alan Boardman also explores the physicality of chemical interaction. He is interested in the idea of deformity as a method of understanding nature and investigates this through a non-narrative abstract layering of a variety of paint media. He uses household paint and oil paint which creates a range of effects reminiscent of organic meshworks and hierarchical networks. The pictures are at once opaque and reflective, the surface reflects the likeness of the viewer, while also opening a space that refers to the micro and macro structures of the self.

Tom Fox’s paintings evoke a sense of being led into some unearthly, magical land. They are landscapes of an other place and time. His thought process is the bipolarity of the world; positive and negative, light and dark, the underbelly, the opposite of the ‘shiny happy’ world of cultural optimism. At the same time, the hills are signposts in nature, a space for contemplation, light and optimistic in a realistic sense. Human presence is represented by words and symbols which he appropriates from sources as varied as Ancient Greece and The Smiths.

click to view more pictures of the opening night

ENQUIRIES TO: Ciara Garvey ciara@canvas.ie

PHOTOGRAPHY BY Michael Kelly