Geraldine O’Neill: Flicker, Flicker

Thursday 16 October – Saturday 15 November 2025
Geraldine O'Neill, Mise en scène, 2025 | Geraldine O’Neill: Flicker, Flicker | Thursday 16 October – Saturday 15 November 2025 | Kevin Kavanagh | Image: Geraldine O'Neill, Mise en scène, 2025 | this is presumably a photo taken in the artist’s studio; we see a rake of stuff – a step ladder on the left, a vacuum cleaner on the floor, an animal skull on the floor, etc.; on a wall to the left hang various images, possibly source material; facing the camera a very large canvas on which there is a possibly finished painting in a representational style; in it we see a background that is possibly based on a Renaissance painting of saint-in-wilderness variety; there is also a fish or two, a vacuum cleaner, an animal skull, a mallard duck, a Peppa the Pig, a baby on a white tray, a yellow balloon with a face on it…; and in front of a cloth in the painting stands a young figure with long blond hair and a yellow t-shirt holding the vacuum-cleaner shaft thing
Opening Reception Thursday 16 October at 6pm

First it flickers and then it tips (us out of the Holocene).

Geraldine O’Neill’s new exhibition, Flicker, Flicker, responds to the escalating tension between humanity and the natural world. Her work speaks directly to the Anthropocene, our current epoch, where human presence is inscribed into the geological fabric of the earth.

For O’Neill, this presence is made vivid through the everyday. Domestic references, images of her children, and items from her studio mingle with art-historical fragments, still birds, and household detritus. These layered references move between the personal and the collective, situating the intimacy of home life within broader cultural and ecological frameworks.

O’Neill’s distinctive painterly approach, grounded in conceptual rigour and technical mastery, reanimates these instances across time and memory. Through her colour-saturated virtuosity, she creates surfaces that are at once sobering and luminous, reflecting on the fragility of our world while offering a space of haunting beauty.

To coincide with Flicker, Flicker, the Gallery is hosting an afternoon with Geraldine O’Neill and Dr Yvonne Scott: In Conversation on Sunday 9th November at 2pm, as part of Dublin Gallery Weekend. 

Geraldine O’Neill lives and works in Dublin, Ireland. She is a member of the RHA (2013) Aosdána (2015) and the Artists Collective Shell/ter (S/TAC) which she co-founded in 2020.

Recent solo and group exhibitions include Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood, Curated by Hettie Judah in collaboration with Hayward Gallery, VISUAL Carlow (2025), Magic and Loss, Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin (2024), In aDream in a Happy House, with the S/TAC collective, Limerick City Gallery of Art (2024), The Ties That Bind, with the S/TAC collective, GOMA Waterford (2024),The Sunset Belongs To You, a socially engaged portrait project with Mick O’Dea, The Model, Sligo, (2023-2024), The Ladder is always there, S/TAC with 10 emerging artists, Draíocht Arts Centre. (2023-2024), Shelter, with the S/TAC collective, The Print Gallery, National Gallery of Ireland (2023), It Took a Century, women artists and the RHA, The National Gallery of Ireland (2023), Portrait Lab, The Model Sligo (2022-23), Solastalgia, Solo exhibition, Kevin Kavanagh, (2022), Meat and Potatoes, Crawford Art Gallery, Cork (2022), Golden Fleece Award 21 Years, Solstice Arts Centre, Navan (2022), Ground_Zero_ 360, Museum of Biblical Art, Dallas, USA (2021), New Perspectives, National Gallery of Ireland (2021).

O’Neill has given many guest lectures and is an external examiner with Atlantic Technological University, Sligo. O’Neill’s work is collected by the country’s leading cultural institutions including The National Gallery of Ireland, Irish Museum of Modern Art, The Model, Sligo, Crawford Gallery, Cork, OPW, The Arts Council and the European Central Bank.

Image: Geraldine O'Neill, Mise en scène, 2025
Thursday 16 October – Saturday 15 November 2025
Kevin Kavanagh
Chancery Lane
Dublin 8
Telephone: +353 1 475 9514
info@kevinkavanaghgallery.ie
www.kevinkavanagh.ie
Opening hours / start times:
Tuesday to Saturday 11am – 5pm
Admission / price: Free

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