PATRICK GRAHAM, it seems to me, has not really put out his full strength in his Dublin exhibitions of the past few years which, admittedly, have been widely spaced. Even his Douglas Hyde Gallery show, good and ultra personal as it was, did not quite generate the emotional temperature and raw gustiness which mark his finest pictures there was something indefinably bland about it, and a tendency for the parts to become more interesting than the whole.
Since his new exhibition is titled Somewhere Jerusalem, we can assume that some thematic link or programme lies behind it, however indirectly, but we are not told. The title picture, virtually a diptych, has plenty of action but somehow does not quite cohere as a whole, and the right "wing" is oddly blank. By contrast, where Graham the draughtsman takes over, particularly in the picture which shows a dead or wounded man lying on a bed, the effect is direct and moving.
A kind of graphic playfulness dominates some of the other works, bringing them almost into the ambit of such American artist cartoonists as Steinberg and Steig. One seemingly alludes to the Venus and Adonis myth, another to Lough Owell (presumably a childhood memory, since it is near Graham's birthplace, Mullingar) and to hang gliding. In another, what appears to be a large funeral casket or sarcophagus is surmounted by a jester's cap.
While all of this is individual, inventive and eye catching and could have been done by nobody else, it is also rather minor key, as though Graham were playing about a theme rather than confronting it full frontal or in depth. Which of course is fully acceptable on its own terms, but I still miss the special Graham fortissimo, with his own full orchestra scoring.