As afore-mentioned I headed for Dublin today with the purpose of visiting a number of galleries and the project met with mixed success; I had not quite bargained with the reluctance of the commercial gallery owners to return to the fray. I suppose when I thought about it, before Christmas was when they were most likely to do business and there was hardly going to be a huge rush at this time of the year - only annoying people like me who weren't going to buy anything anyway.
However, the first visit was, as always, wonderful:
The Turner Watercolours in the National
I snuck a few shots with my phone - no flash,of course - but really they don't do them any justice and I would advise anyone to go and see them if they can during January. Aspiring art students really should see what this amazing man was doing in the early 19th century:
When you look at these, the true meaning of the word abstraction really comes to mind. Here was an artist, who, in pursuit of meaning was not afraid to abstract what he saw as the essence of the scene in front of him, as he perceived it.
See this exhibition: if not this year, make it your business to see it when it comes up next January.
On my way, I noticed this building in Nassau Street which I must have passed about a million times ( not exaggerating!) but I never saw that sign before - seeing, not looking!
Red on Green was closed, as was Peppercanister, so from there I wound my way up to IMMA for another look ant Alice Maher's wonderful show -once again I have to say that now that I understand animation a bit more I am even mere impressed by what is here.
A walk through Iveagh Gardens at the back of IMMA ( UCD as I knew it!) brought me over to Camden Street and to The Copper House Gallery:
This takes some finding but it was open and that was mainly because it is a working printmakers and they were working.
The exhibition was nothing if not varied :
this being one example that particularly appealed to me. If you go to their website:
you will get a lovely tour through the show and see some of the work their artists are doing.
I am only now beginning to get some idea of the range of work that is covered by the term 'print'.
On a wall near the gallery I noticed some graffito which I think merited record:
Sans Parole.
Moving on down Camden Street and into Stephens Green I found the Rubicon also closed so after the inevitable visit to Hodges Figgis I dropped in to Sol who are now running a separate entity for more contemporary art called 'Eight'
Here there was another rather different show by Anne Hendrick called Hokum:
...and here are a couple of her pieces:
They have something of the look of fantasy landscapes but without the cliche and some of the rocky scenes reminded me of William Blake.
By this time, the walking was beginning to take its toll but I made a sally into Temple Bar hoping to get into Graphic Studios - sadly still on hols too...............but so am I so why should I complain.
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