Holding Space presents a fascinating collaboration between Mollie Douthit and Sara Baume. The exhibition will include paintings, sculpture and needlework, all reflecting the artists’ common process of building pieces gradually, almost ritualistically. Both also share a certain curiosity in spirituality and mysticism, which is referenced by the gap at the centre of the handkerchiefs Baume will be showing, the literal space that each piece holds, which has also become a kind of signifier of their friendship. Douthit, her paintings and their friendship are also the subject of Baume’s forthcoming book, Opening Night, which will be published by Granta in the summer of 2026.

Catherine Marshall, former Head of Collections at IMMA, has written of Mollie Douthit that she “shows extraordinary maturity for a young artist. She paints objects so commonplace in everyday experience that they would be comic, were they not painted with such seriousness and such careful study…… Douthit’s wonderful little canvases ask us simply to look at them, at the painting process, at existence itself.”

Douthit places her work in the tradition of 18th century still life painters, most notably Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin and his depictions of everyday objects. She is also drawn to the stillness found in the work of Giorgio Morandi and Gwen John. Contemporary influences include Alice Neel, Chantal Joffe and Peter Drecher. “These painters allow paint to speak for itself, for the subject and for a moment in time,” she says. “With their own language, they each extend something beyond the surface of a painting.”

In her art practice, Sara Baume is interested in ritual and sacred objects, and in miniatures, and by the uniquely human tendency to create miniaturised utopias – both as a form of play and a means of exercising control over the reality of a world that is increasingly unpredictable. Among the works she’ll be showing in ‘Holding space’ are a series of hand-sewn handkerchiefs which draw influence from folk art and amateur craft. ‘They are essentially domestic objects,’ she says, ‘that have been stripped of function in favour of decoration and symbolism. My tendency to gravitate toward mysticism is referenced by the gap at the centre of every handkerchief, the literal space that each piece holds.’

Baume is a writer and artist based in West Cork. She is the author of three novels and a non-fiction book called handiwork. In 2018 her debut solo exhibition took place in the Morley Gallery in central London with the support of Culture Ireland. In 2020 her neon text-work, so sick and tired, was displayed on the façade of the National Sculpture Factory in collaboration with Cork Midsummer Festival and subsequently purchased by the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery. In 2021, she showed as part of the group show, Home: Being and Belonging in Contemporary Ireland, in the Glucksman Gallery, and in 2025 her installation, Altarpiece for Medieval North Main Street, was exhibited in St. Peter’s Church in Cork city. In summer 2026 her fifth book, Opening Night, is due to be published.