Re-Framing the Domestic in Irish Art
29th April - 2nd August 2014
Lucy Andrews, Aideen Barry, Diana Copperwhite, Maud Cotter, Dorothy Cross, Gerard Dillon, Laura Fitzgerald, Jessica Foley, Fr Jack Hanlon, Siobhan Hapaska, Anthony Haughey,  Brian Hegarty, Grace Henry, Patrick Jolley, Rebecca Trost, Inger Lise Hansen, Mary A. Kelly, John Kindness, Danny Lartigue, Vanessa Donoso Lopez, Maggie Madden, Alice Maher, Locky Morris, Janet Mullarney, William Mulready, Sinead McCann, William McKeown, Isabel Nolan, Abigail O’Brien, Margaret O’Brien, Bea Orpen, William Orpen, Kathy Prendergast, Hilda Roberts, Declan Rooney, Mary Swanzy and Jennifer Trouton.

‘Home is no longer a dwelling but the untold story of a life being lived.’ [1]

There are many kinds of spaces, both physical and metaphysical, that artists play with in their work, and many spaces that we, as humans inhabit. However, perhaps the most familiar space, the one that has been the stimulus for much artistic enquiry, be it visual or otherwise, has been the domestic, or home space, as that is where our earliest and most formative experiences are shaped.

This exhibition takes as its root the domestic in all its simple complexities and contradictions, to ask what facts and fictions the domestic suggests to the artist and viewer today. Beginning with works that allude to the domestic within the Drogheda Municipal Art Collection, these have acted as pinpoints in which to thread contemporary works to create new ways of looking and experiencing the domestic in art and life.

In bringing together three different voices:  Aoife Ruane, the Director of the gallery; Amanda Coogan an artist and Jane Humphries an art historian/writer, their individual concerns have been creatively challenged to renegotiate the preconceived ideas that the domestic presents as a contained, safe, familiar concept. Literally, from discussions around a domestic kitchen table, these three voices have shared their ideas, knowledge and experiences.

The exhibition draws from IMMA’s and the Arts Council’s Collection, as private collections, well as artist’s studios.

[1] John Berger, And Our Faces, My Heart: Brief as Photos. quoted in Humphries. Jane (Re)imagining the domestic in contemporary Irish art p. 74

Highlanes Gallery,
Laurence Street, Drogheda, Louth.
tel: +353419803311 (Contact) , 353419803313 (Fax)
email: info@highlanes.ie