Art

Visual arts highlights of the week

An evening of words and music with Turner Prize-winner Martin Creed at The Model, Pugin Revisited at the IAA, and the Doorway Gallery focuses on the magnificence of horses

Aura, Tony O’Connor, Doorway Gallery

Aidan Dunne's face
Aidan Dunne
Sat Apr 28 2018 - 05:00

Martin Creed, an evening of words and music

The Model, Home of the Niland Collection, The Mall, Sligo Thurs May 3rd Admission €5, booking essential at themodel.ie To conclude the exhibition Turbulence, The Model presents an evening of words and music with Turner Prize-winner Martin Creed, who has been as active in music as in art. His double A-side single, Let Them In/ Border Control was made at the end of 2015 in response to the Syrian refugee crisis and featured as part of Turbulence.

Order, Democrocia

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Pugin Revisited, IARC

Rua Red, Tallaght, Dublin Until June 23rd ruared.ie A new operatic work by Pablo España and Iván López, the artistic collective Democracia. Filmed in Dublin, Houston and London, the work offers a critique of capitalism in the form of interventions in public and private spaces, from a dinner at the Dorchester in London to a young church choir singing at a shopping mall in Dublin via the Black Panthers in Houston.

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Achar, Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh

Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Chancery Lane, Dublin. Until May 26th kevinkavanagh.ie

Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh's paintings have usually marked out spaces and enclosures, from stages to stadiums, while remaining more or less abstract. Now, in Achar, she alludes to distance and journeys. But then, achar can also refer to a period of time and an extent of area, so we are still approximate to those spaces. As Frank Stella put it in Working Space, the painter has to make a space for herself, and the paintings flourish in that space.

Pugin Revisited Drawings by A W N Pugin. Irish Architectural Archive, 45 Merrion Sq, Dublin Until May 31st iarc.ie

When Roger Coleman donated material relating to the architectural practice Ashlin & Coleman to the IAA in 2001, it was immediately noticed that one portfolio contained a number of especially fine drawings. They proved to be from the sketchbooks of the celebrated 19th-century architect Pugin, the champion of the Gothic Revival in Britain and Ireland. A keen traveller, he sketched buildings wherever he went, for reference and instruction. Now, in 2018, several more Pugin drawings, exhibited here for the first time, were included in another donation from Roger Coleman.

Brian O’Doherty: Language and Space

Irish Museum of Modern Art, Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, Dublin Until September 16th imma.ie

IMMA looks to its collection for this, one of a hectic year of shows and events devoted to Brian O'Doherty. Drawing has always been central to his work, on paper and in space in his vast Rope Drawings, which trace Ogham, lines in 3-d. Also highlighted is his collaborative work with Stoney Road Press.

Unbridled by Tony O’Connor

The Doorway Gallery, 24 South Frederick Street Dublin. From May 3rd thedoorwaygallery.com

A significant proportion of humanity is in thrall to horses, and artists who are horse painters tend to equestrian subjects to the exclusion of most others. Tony O’Connor is even more selective. He dispenses with the trappings of the turf and other distractions, and focuses intently on the magnificence of the animals. He comes from a line of blacksmiths, he notes, so the involvement is deep-rooted.