Solomon Fine Art is delighted to present A Fine Figure; a three-person exhibition of Irish contemporary ceramic sculpture featuring the work of Michael Flynn, Lucy Meagher and Ann Marie Robinson. The exhibition has been curated by Mike Robinson, former Head of Applied Arts at the Ulster Museum, Belfast and an expert in Irish contemporary glass & ceramics.

This is an exhibition purely of the figurative which is but one aspect of contemporary ceramic sculpture. It isn’t all that long, in historical terms, since all sculpture seemingly had a mandate to be descriptive, realistic in appearance and mostly narrative in subject matter. Our own time and those factors, social, cultural and technological that have shaped it, put an end to all that. Abstraction, creative new uses of old materials altered every horizon. Now when we return to once familiar subject matter, we seem to do so by different routes. The figures shown here are, most definitely, of their own time. No other. Their makers, employing familiar subjects, address them in a language entirely their own.

The three artists in this show are not just figurative artists, they are all, in their own way, storytellers. Each of them uses the figure to make some statement about their fellow human beings. He, she, becomes an edifying, illuminatory or cautionary tale, a decorative example of something to be admired for its own qualities, to be laughed at, even ridiculed; an expression of one’s own fears and apprehensions, an exploration of the dark that lingers within. Of course it’s perfectly true to say that that is all artists have ever done since the beginning of time. Yes, but these three are doing it today. They are talking to us, about us.

MICHAEL FLYNN

Michael Flynn is one of those modern Irish Wild Geese long-known on all continents, a peripatetic storyteller, a wandering bard reviving and retelling myths familiar to the whole of humanity, and interpreting them in ceramic in a way that no other media could.

LUCY MEAGHER

A graduate of NCAD and currently working in Dublin, Meagher’s doll-like figures seek to convey subtle expressions of the human condition – frailties,times of transformation, insecurity and sometimes emotional pain experienced as we constantly grow and change, while also conveying the strength and endurance of the human spirit.

ANN MARIE ROBINSON

Robinson graduated from Ulster University in 1982 and since then the figurative has been a constant element in her work. Her lavishly decorated and gilded teapots and vessels are mostly decorative, rarely utilitarian, and usually extend a wry comment on the current fashional and social affections of the day.