Austin McQuinn
Opening Thursday April 25th. 2024
MOUNTAINS, FALL ON US
Solo Exhibition at Limerick City Gallery of Art
Mountains, Fall on Us.
An exhibition of new and recent paintings and sculptural installations.
Curated by Helena Tobin
APRIL 26 - JUNE 09 - 2024
Limerick City Gallery of Art, Carnegie Building, Pery Square, Limerick, Ireland. V94 E67F
Tel: +353 (0)61 310633
Monday- Saturday 10am - 5pm; & Sunday 12 - 5pm
Limerick City Gallery of Art (LCGA) is delighted to present Mountains, Fall on Us by Austin McQuinn.
This is a significant opportunity to experience a large body of new and recent work, curated by Helena Tobin, Artistic Director of South Tipperary Arts Centre (STAC).
Mountains, Fall on Us invokes the poetic object as a means of salvation, alongside micro gestures of iconoclasm. Paintings on discarded military engravings, a tower of Aran sweaters, medals, clay tongues, sequins, bog oak and upholstery fabric are reclaimed and refashioned with a new baroque sensibility. Queered with an optimism and infused with what the artist has called 'a kind of mad hope', McQuinn takes possession of these found images and objects, painting over them with ink in an extravagant and decadent defacement.
His reworking of the discarded prints of popes, earls, and imperial militaria with highly elaborate doodling is not so much as critique or commentary but as a reclamation of these historic power images. The intention is to achieve a personal overcoming of the experience of oppression by these embodiments of imperial authority. At a bacterial level of interrogation and reinterpretation, the singular becomes plural. These new biologies churn with psychedelic energy where, as the artist asserts, “popes become pupae for some new of kind of creation or thinking I want to release."
The biblical title of the exhibition comes from Michael Hartnett’s titular poem and reflects McQuinn’s deeply felt connection to the Limerick poet. Hartnett's proclamation that the ‘the act of poetry is a rebel act’ resonates strongly with McQuinn as fellow artist and outsider. He also draws from the sensibilities of ancient texts, mythologies, Kafka, Kavanagh and contemporary poets such as Sean Hewitt. He feels that the deep action of observation is the artist’s and poet’s primary task and responding with a poetic work is the challenge.
Austin McQuinn’s solo exhibition at LCGA encompasses all of the ground floor galleries in a major presentation of new paintings and sculptural installations. This exhibition is a reclamation and revisiting of important materials he has employed in his long practice, living and working in Ireland. McQuinn is a visual artist and live art performance expert and his studio practice is supported with major awards from the Arts Council and the acquisition of work for public and private collections in Ireland and the United States.
His recent book on sound, animality and performance was reissued this year by Penn State University Press.
Recent exhibitions of newly commissioned work include The Source, Thurles and South Tipperary Arts Centre culminating in an epic twenty-four hour continuous live-streamed, live art performance called Imperial Lunatic at STAC Chapel Clonmel in April 2023.
https://gallery.limerick.ie/LCGAExhibitions/
Any queries about Limerick City Gallery of Art please contact artgallery@limerick.ie
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Recent: 2023
31st March – Solo exhibition - ‘Some signs are secret, some manifest’ -
South Tipperary Arts Centre
https://www.southtippartscentre.ie/events/austin-mcquinn-some-signs-are-secret-some-manifest
22nd April - ‘Imperial Lunatic’
24hr hour live-art installation/performance at STAC Chapel.
Stills and Sounds of the Event can be viewed on Austin's YouTube channel here:
https://youtu.be/qNMqJHHiA5o?si=89b-WIXhWFIQxzzK
25th April - In Conversation: Austin McQuinn & Fearghus Ó’ Conchúir
Artist Austin McQuinn in conversation with Dancer and Choreographer Fearghus Ò Conchùir, about creating Performance work using their own bodies, on their experiences on Residencies, on what influences them and how their individual practices and aspirations converse.
https://youtu.be/vkpHCZcNrCE?si=rI_sw1FrzM9zN5CB
Event hosted by South Tipperary Arts Centre.
Austin McQuinn is an award-winning visual artist and performance expert, living and working in South Tipperary. His has had several solo exhibitions at Project Arts Centre, Dublin, Butler Gallery, Kilkenny and David Cunningham Projects San Francisco, The Source, Thurles and most recently at STAC, Clonmel. His work is collected by The Arts Council and many public and private collections in Ireland and U.S.A.
His book, Becoming Audible, on animality, sound and performance is published by Penn State University Press.
https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-08796-2.html
