This exhibition of new works marks the culmination of a year long studio residency at the RHA, which the artist was awarded in 2023.

In Jorge Luis Borges’ story, ‘The House of Asterion’, the protagonist pretends to be asleep, only to find that sometimes he really sleeps since, on opening his eyes, ‘the colour of the day has changed’. Colour is not only a feature of light and space: it belongs to the passing of time and the hues of consciousness itself.

Ward’s exhibition is about perception and reality, sensorial experience, mirrors and shadows, nothing and being. Visibility of the frame, what is included and excluded, highlights the paradox of care and loss, illuminated by showing watercolour paintings subject to bleaching in a daylight-filled space. The windows themselves are masked with a wash of paint to veil and protect the works inside, and prevent colours fading. Much like a shop front that has been whited out while it’s no longer in use, the Corner Gallery of the RHA was previously a store. This method of eliciting paintings from their environment, and blurring a distinction between art and life, informs the interplay of this exhibition.

An ephemerality permeates the artist’s works, as if only thin membranes mark them off from each other and their surroundings. The use of aquarelle and collage in combination with natural resin and acrylic binder enables the creation of thin layers, glazes and washes, similar to oil painting, although less toxic on hands, inhalation, and on the earth. Water has a connection with the body, and it’s use as a resource in this work gives the paintings a fibrous, biological, even delicate nature. Colour itself becomes aqueous. Textural polarities offset each other, shininess and stickiness, identifiable and indeterminate shapes. Chalky patches are brought into a relationship on one plane with detritus from scrapbooks, like that of falling flowers – fragments are assembled and recomposed to create meaning.

The ‘I’ or eye takes on a feminine perspective in works such as ‘Table’, ‘Rose’ and ‘Friendship’, calling the complexities of the self into question. In keeping with this, the works are relational, not just there to be looked at but looking out for each other. The reflective materials, blurring rather than mirroring their environment, call to mind the recursive worlds of writers such as Borges, and the Irish artist greatly influenced by him, Brian O’Doherty. These are handmade personal paintings (PP) that compete with LED screens, while simultaneously offering a rest from digital technology. The display, aging and care of works beyond the studio is of conceptual significance within their own visual fields. In the last instance, the attempt to preserve paintings that may change over time can be seen as a play on the changes that take place in the psyche, the body, or in ‘the colour of the day’.

This exhibition marks the culmination of a year long studio residency at the RHA, which the artist was awarded in 2023.  The artist would like to acknowledge the support of: Patrick T. Murphy, Sarah McAuliffe, Colin Martin and the RHA team, John Beattie, Marysia Wieckiewicz-Carroll, Luke Gibbons and The Arts Council.

Dublin based artist Louise Ward was awarded a studio on the RHA Artist in Residence programme, 2023. Ward works across the mediums of painting and performance. She has exhibited independently and collaboratively with other artists (including Karin Schneider) at The Artist’s Institute, Roth, CAGE, Location One and New Museum in NYC; the Institute of Contemporary Art London; the Centre for Contemporary Arts Glasgow; Supermarket Independent Art Fair Sweden; Wexford Arts Centre, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Rua Red and CONNECT Dublin. Ward’s practice has been funded by The Arts Council and purchased for State and private collections, both in Ireland and abroad. Her work has been reviewed in Artforum, Gallerist NY, The Irish Times and The Visual Artists’ News Sheet and included in the publication ‘Performance Art in Ireland: A History’. The artist studied at Chelsea College of Art in London, graduating with an MA in Fine Art in 2011. Prior to this, she co-founded the performance art platform ‘Livestock’ – as a studio artist and board member at the Market Studios Dublin. Alongside her artistic practice, Ward is an established arts consultant working independently at present with the HSE. She has previously held roles as the Public Art Coordinator at the OPW and dlr County Council, and the Paying the Artist Project Officer at The Arts Council.

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