Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh – Deep Mapping: Unseen Landscapes

Sat 11 February – Fri 31 March

Opening reception: Sat 11 Feb 2:30pm. All are welcome, no booking required

We need more fluid ways of perceiving the layers that are everywhere, and new ways of calling attention to the passages between old and new, of weaving the old place into the new place – Lucy Lippard i

For her solo exhibition at Solstice, Ní Mhaonaigh presents a series of new paintings that characteristically feature prominent elements of the built environment: vernacular structures, houses, factories, sheds. However, one notes that over time, some of these buildings have been demolished, therefore reframing the durational function of painting as one of recording a landscape in flux. These works portray absent forms in a moment prior to their erasure; however, they also trace the enduring hum of subatomic particles, or the ways in which enigmatic shadows continue to haunt the horizon. Movingly, the artist describes this kind of spatial and temporal dislocation as “working with an ever-present void.”

These paintings also consider present-day human relations to the land at a very basic level: How do we dwell? Who determines the value or usefulness of knowledge? How do we cultivate sustainable communities and authentic lives? Representing only the empirical physicality of landscape, traditional maps fail to convey how place is perceived and inhabited by different people over time.ii By contrast, through the non-linear act of painting, Ní Mhaonaigh traces unseen layers across exterior and interior registers to purposefully situate herself in the world.

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i  Lucy R. Lippard, The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentred Society (New York: The New Press, 1997)

ii Leticia Sabino et al., ‘Empathy Walks’ in Phil Cohen and Mike Duggan (eds.), New directions in radical cartography: Why the map is never the territory (Landham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021) p 183

ACCOMPANYING EVENTS

– Gallery Tours using Visual Thinking Strategies for adults, teens, primary & secondary school groups

Various dates/times

– Artistic Explorers: The Visible Invisible

Wed 15 – Fri 17 Feb, 10:30am – 12:30pm each day, €60, ages: 8-12, mid-term camp

– Gallery Preview for Teachers

Tue 21 Feb, 4pm – 5:30pm, free

– Sensory Connections – children/adult groups

Wednesdays 22 Feb & 1, 8, 15, 29 Mar, 10am – 11am, €5 per participant

– In Conversation with artist Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh

Fri 24 Feb, 1pm – 1:40pm & 2pm – 2:40pm, free, booking required

– Mapping the Invisible

Fri 3 Mar, 10am – 11:30am & 12pm – 1:30pm, €3 per student, primary schools 1st – 6th class

– Sensory Connections – families with children aged 3-6

Sat 4 Mar, 10am – 11:30am & 11:30am – 12:30pm, €5 per child

– Seen-Unseen: Event for the blind and visually impaired

Fri 31 Mar, 2:30pm – 3:30pm, free (in-person and on Zoom)