BASICALLY, Hughie O'Donoghue's exhibition of carborundum prints falls into two sections; four large, imposing black and white figure pieces, and the much more colourful and varied (though smaller) series called A Line of Retreat. Of the black and white prints, three are Crucifixion pieces while the fourth has no title, though it is similar in style.
These very large works have a vertical, almost Gothic format and obviously relate closely to the big charcoal drawings of the same theme on which the artist has been working for several years. They are monumental and somewhat anguished, without being out and out Expressionist - there is no head on assault on the emotions, rather a sense of being a spectator, though not a detached one. They have, nonetheless, a solemnity and weight which is moving.
The Line of Retreat prints number ten in all and are hung closely together, to form an overall installation or sequence rather like a suite in music. Their touch off point was O'Donoghue's reading of his father's letters recording his experience as a British army motorcyclist during the abortive 1940 campaign in France, which ended in evacuation at Dunkirk though the elder O'Donoghue's embarkation for home actually took place at Cherbourg.
One of the prints shows this almost explicitly, with the sharp profile of a destroyer looming out from the port. The others are much more generalised, or rather interiorised, and set out to evoke subjective moods and emotional moments rather than to recreate events graphically. The general ambience is brooding rather than violent, but there is much dinner contrast, and the colours range from lurid reddish tones to soft, silky blues. Taken as a unit, the ten prints make an impressive achievement in their own right and have a sequential logic which is convincing.