The second part of Solstice Arts Centre’s 2017 visual art programme organised by Curator in Residence Sabina Mac Mahon sees three separate solo shows by three very different artists taking place simultaneously across the gallery’s three exhibition spaces. While there is no set unifying thematic aside from some allusion to Meath’s history, heritage or landscape, when viewed collectively the three shows look, in a general way, at the various ways in which artists adopt methods of abstraction in their work and how abstraction – of information, images and materials – relates to their individual processes of making.

For details of associated education events and workshops please check here.

Cliona Harmey makes work inspired by the histories and artefacts of early technological inventions and communication technologies. Previous work has referenced forms of inscription and organisation, while more recently she has incorporated live data from transport and communications infrastructures into her practice. Ultimately she attempts to turn technologies back on themselves and slow instantaneous technologies to a more phenomenal, human pace. The new work included in this exhibition explores ideas around climate, measurement and notation and is influenced by the poetics and brevity of the Beaufort Scale. The Beaufort Scale was devised in 1805 as a means of measuring wind speed at sea by Navan-born Rear Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort. 2017 marks the 160th anniversary of his death.

http://www.clionaharmey.info/

Seán Molloy’s exhibition of new paintings involves the construction of a series of capriccio-inspired landscape works that make tangential references to the ancient topographical features associated with the county of Meath. While encompassing some of the more identifiable characteristics of this landscape, his intention is to also introduce a set of anachronistic elements that serve to both counteract and reinforce traditional approaches to documenting a sense of place. These elements take the form of features drawn from architectural archives, Dutch ‘Golden Age’ landscapes and over-painted abstract designs and optical devices. By doing this he encourages the viewer to create their own stories of the landscape of Meath that extend beyond their pre-existing or received ideas of it.

https://www.works.io/sean-molloy

David Quinn makes deliberate, considered abstract paintings and will be showing a new series of intimately scaled works on wood and paper. Patrick T. Murphy of the Royal Hibernian Academy has previously written of his work that “there is this oscillation between work that meets us head on, whole, and work that commences with detail, section, before building into its wholeness. The latter work takes its vocabulary from the elements of the building site – off-cuts, odd shapes of plywood, MDF, Perspex… Their presence on the gallery wall seems to challenge the order of architecture, to undermine the plumb and the level, to tilt us into asking where they get their authority from, how can they, from such abject origins, get to take the place of ‘art’.”

http://www.davidquinn.ie/