Monday 25 February 2019

Visible Reminders of Invisible Light. Hunt & Limerick City Museum from 24th January, 2019 until 24th March, 2019.


This exhibition looks at Family and participating artists use objects from both the Hunt Museum and Limerick City Museum as a reference point in making a visual art response. 17 artists are taking part in this show and their work is sited beside the objects that they choose.  

Here are images and information about my responses.

Share, Oil on Canvas, 18 X 24cm

Limerick Museum has a wonderful eclectic collection of silver.  In choosing an object suggesting family, I was attracted to the cutlery.  It has shared food and touched lips through generations. It is formal, valuable and yet ordinary too. It can be the inherited family silver or just the handiest implement to stir the gravy.
Meeting and sharing food and conversation is part of the gel of society.  As families we catch up around the kitchen table at dinner and silver’s surface reflects our lives back on us.  In this work the silver on a check background reflects this union of formality and homeliness.


Choker, Oil on Canvas, 24 X 18 cm.

Pearls have symbolically represented purity, wisdom and wealth.  Greek legend said they were tears of the gods and Hindu folklore saw pearls as dewdrops. To keep their lustre they must be worn regularly, as the oil from the skin feed them. This makes them quite intimate objects passing through generations of families. 
However, I see pearls today more as symbolising wealth and conservatism. The pearls in this work act as decoration but also, more threateningly, represent a noose of respectability that’s stifling the woman. The painting is part of the ongoing conversation regarding the status of women in the family and in society now.