Liens exhibition is bound to be good

AN exhibition of work by Fanore artist Finola Graham and her Parisian counterpart Pauline Turmel has kicked off at the Courthouse Gallery in Ennistymon and will continue until June 7.

The exhibition is entitled Liens (ties, bonds, connections) and is an evolution of the work done by the pair since their exhibition Cross Currents, which was in the Centre Culturel Irlandais Paris last year. The Paris exhibition was the result of a process of exchange of ideas and of place that took place over a period of three years between the two artists.
Of the exhibition, Finola says there is a mix of work. “Some of the paintings are from the exhibition in Paris and they were a result of my working in Paris, where I studied in the sixties. Pauline’s studio was in an area where I had spent a very intense period of my life in the sixties and it brought up a lot of memories. I did begin, with that work, using a lot of Japanese paper and Japanese glue and putting layers onto canvas. Since then I’ve gone deeper into that way of working, it’s sort of mixed media really.
“Then other canvasses are in a way landscape, but it’s more a kind of an effect of a stripped landscape, with a kind of an idea of whiteness and space that you get in the Burren landscape. It’s really very minimal and stripped down.”
She says the effect of the North Clare landscape on Pauline is one of the main themes. “She spent a lot of time with a man who has greyhounds in Ennistymon and there are pictures of people from here, the area here and it’s about how the area affected her.”