IGI events
Familiar Exhibition
April 16 2010
What is the effect of constant exposure to media images of
celebrities, politicians and other public figures?
Does their ubiquity imply familiarity?
Their lives are played out in glossy magazines and TV programmes to the extent that we feel we know them as much as our real friends and family.
Family and friends are easily recognized.
They are familiar to us.
But are these high profile people even more familiar?
Una Gildea’s work explores the divide between what is familiar in the traditional sense and familiar through the mass media.
She paints intimate portraits, close up, to emphasise familiarity with a focus on the mouth and eyes. Friends and family are painted in the same way as the politicians or other well-known people.
The result is a series of ‘familiar’ portraits, a painted photo album of people we recognize, whether we know them or not.
Paul MacCormaic takes imagery from household packaging and advertisements that are so commonplace that we identify with them as an extended global family. These ubiquitous images are appropriated and painted on a larger scale. Taken out of their context and put to work in a humorous quirky mix-up, the viewer is re-presented with a curious blend of homeliness, nostalgia and the hard sell.
The converse of ‘familiar’ is equally important for MacCormaic. He investigates our experience of when what should be familiar is a very different experience in reality, such as his failure to recognise himself in Self Portrait After a Fight.
Una Gildea is a freelance multi-disciplinary artist based in Dublin. She studied in Amsterdam and New York, and specialises in painting, drawing, animation and collage. Una is currently exhibiting at the Irish Museum of Contemporary Art in ‘Blasphemous’, (“An unholy exhibition”, The Sunday Times) an exhibition to protest against Ireland’s new blasphemy law. She also regularly contributes editorial illustrations to the Irish Times.
Paul MacCormaic is a realist painter who has had several solo shows in Ireland and is currently exhibiting in China as part of Irish Wave. He studied History of Art at UCD and Fine Art at Dún Laoghaire IADT. He has won numerous awards including first prize for painting at the Oireachtas 2001 and the Catalyst Student Award, Belfast, in 2006. He teaches painting part-time at the National College of Art and Design.
Familiar Exhibition:
Unit H, Market Studios, corner of Halson St & Mary’s Lane (off Capel St), 12-6pm, Tues to Sun (closed Mondays).
The show continues until Sunday 25th, Tues -Sunday, 12:00-18:00, Closed Monday
For more information, contact Paul MacCormaic on 083 3303299
