ON THE TOWN: The current show in the RHA explores the holiday frame of mind. The eight artists set about portraying, in small paintings, the idea of "holiday".
Don't expect a catalogue of those cherished long-ago holiday moments . . . rain, chairoplanes, Tramore, the bumpers and the crunchy taste of sand in your sandwiches.
William McKeon, curator of the current show at the RHA, The Holiday Show, and a participating artist, explains that his work aims to focus on "those moments when we were not separate . . . where you are both closer to self and further away from self".
His one blue painting represents the sky, he said. "You can be anywhere and look at the sky and have that holiday moment as it can take you away from self and closer to self at the same time . . . The holiday thing is something that is inside of you. It's not to do with a particular place."
Stuart Purdy from Donaghadee in Co Down, said his paintings of caravans and tents are not necessarily autobiographical but more about "the micro-materialism that you might get from a territorial occupation of a place".
Two publishers, Antony Farrell, of Lilliput Press and Lucy Freeman, of Cork University Press, picked out their favourite paintings, remembering their own holiday moments from long ago. Freeman was "mostly in west Cork" and Farrell was in a caravan in Roundstone in Co Galway.
Another artist in the show, Darragh Hogan, remembers his own holidays in Lough Gowna in Co Longford. On one side of the RHA Gallery on Ely Place, his paintings hang on a bright orange wall. These represent "holiday" to him, he says. One highlights a line from The Jesus and Mary Chain: "deep one perfect morning as the sun is heading up into the sky," he recited, not singing at all but lost for a moment in thought - at one with that holiday moment, that sense of being at peace.
The show runs until Monday, September 30th in the RHA.