Limerick City Gallery of Art (LCGA) is delighted to launch a new exhibition entitled SORE SPOT, by artists Helen and Eva O’Leary. This exhibition features works that, when combined, aim to find moments of clarity and connection offering a meditation on care, resistance, and the stubborn hope that emerges from making sense of a broken world.

SORE SPOT notes the distance between both artists as mother and daughter – geographic and generational, a map of crossings. It’s about what the hands can make when words fail, how materials can offer a kind of reconciliation – or at least a pause in the noise.

SORE SPOT notes the distance between both artists as mother and daughter – geographic and generational, a map of crossings. It’s about what the hands can make when words fail, how materials can offer a kind of reconciliation – or at least a pause in the noise, to find logic in chaos.

Eva’s body of work in the exhibition Spitting Image, includes photographs of American girls between the ages of eleven and fourteen, reacting to their own image through a two-way mirror.  A generation fluent in selfies, tags on social media, the act of posing and iPhone cameras, the works highlight the dissonance between real and reflected identity.  Meanwhile Helen’s works form a unique dialogue between the two, as she responds to the deep emotional and physical Irish landscapes that form the basis for her practise, a ‘flipbook of faith, money, possibility, belief, absurdity, disappointment and ethical collapse — the rise and fall of so many systems that never worked for so many.. the history of rupture and the hope of restoration.’ Her constructions blur the boundaries between painting and sculpture.

In SORE SPOT, both artists have come together, to disassemble monoliths of language, patriarchy, capitalism, and beauty, (trying of course to find cracks large enough for empathy and humor), and in doing so, rebuild from fracture — in ways personal, political, and formal.

Helen O’Leary (b. 1961) is a Wexford-born artist best known for constructions that blur the boundaries between painting and sculpture.  She holds an MFA and BFA degrees from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL. Currently based both in New York and Drumshanbo, her work has been widely recognized through awards and residencies including the Rome Prize American Academy in Rome; New jersey Fellowship for the Arts, the Hennessy Purchase Award, IMMA, Dublin; the Purchase Award American Academy of Arts and Letters; the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship; the Pollock-Krasner awards (2); the Joan Mitchell Award for painting and sculpture; the Culturel Irlandaise, France; the Sam and Adele Golden Residency, NY; the Mac Dowell Fellowship, New Hamshire; the Skowhegan program, ME; and the Yaddo Residency, NY. Among multiple and prestigious exhibitions are the American Academy of Arts and Letters, NYC; The American Academy in Rome, Italy and NYC; The MAC Belfast, Ireland; National Gallery of Art, Ireland; Lesley Heller Gallery, NYC; Maine Museum of Art, Bangor, Maine; Muscarele Museum of Art, Williamsburg, Virginia; The Butler Gallery, Ireland.  Her work has been featured in various publications and blogs, including Sculpture Magazine, Why I make Art: Contemporary Artist stories of life and Work, Sound and Vision Podcast, Art Forum, Hyperallergic, New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, Art News and the Irish Times. https://www.helenoleary.com

Eva O’Leary (b. 1989) is an artist who works primarily with photography and video.  Her work navigates structural and social systems that perpetuate ideologies of fantasy, power, and control within American society, specifically focused on the impact on young women and their experiences in the world. Her work is deeply personal, using her own experiences, memories, and journals as the foundation of her practice.  O’Leary received her BFA from California College of the Arts in 2012 and her MFA from Yale School of Art in 2016.  She was the recipient of the Outset Unseen Exhibition Fund in 2019, the Hyères Festival Photographie Grand Prix in 2018, The Vontobel Contemporary Photography Prize in 2017, and was named a Foam Talent in 2014.  She has exhibited her work internationally, including at the CAFA Art Museum (Beijing), FOAM (Amsterdam), Villa Noailles (Hyeres, France), l’Atelier Néerlandais (Paris), Benaki Museum (Athens), and Aperture Foundation (New York). Her work has been featured in various publications, including ArtForum, Elephant Magazine ,1000 Words, and The New Yorker. https://www.evaoleary.com

Supported by Butler Gallery, Kilkenny.