PAKI SMITH: THE RED THREAD

Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College Dublin Until Sep 30 01-8961116

Paintings, drawings, quick sketches and notebooks accumulate in this exhibition, building up to a strange and compelling journey into a psychological landscape where what lurks behind closed doors, or on the other side of dreaming, is worryingly close. There are also two films (including, above, Colossus or Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream), staged for viewing through what seem like giant reversed camera lenses, while a pair of diminutive sculptured figures prepare to do battle in a corner.

Paki Smith (along with Ronan Halpin) was the artist some may remember for his enormous figure The Wounded King, which graced the streets of Limerick and then Temple Bar during its regeneration in 1992. Since then, apart from some exhibitions, Smith has been mainly working in film, including set director for Batman Begins. In this exhibition, the themes of fantasy, quest and battle re-emerge, all tinged with the nagging anxiety that this may be a battle that must take place in the mind.

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Patrick Pye at Eighty, Norman Villa Gallery, Wexford Until Sept 6 053-9255071 GEMMA TIPTON