Biography & Events
Solo Exhibitions 2009
"FRIEZE, Selected Small Works"
Greyfriar's Municipal Gallery, Waterford,
Ireland, Nov-Dec '09
Notes from a Silence
Galway Arts Festival 13 - 26 July
Merchants Hall
Merchants Road, Galway, Ireland
Notes from a Silence
Hillsboro Fine Art August 06 - 30
49 Parnell Square West,
Dublin 1, Ireland
Museum Lapua - Finland
Lapua Taidemuseo Finland
December 08 - March 09
Biography
1959 - Born Co. Mayo, Ireland
1982 - Diploma in Painting and print, Galway RTC (GMIT)
1983 - BA Honours Degree, NCAD Dublin
1983 - 1985 Lecturer in Fine Arts, Painting and Print, GMIT Galway
1989 - 1996 Artist and Director, Artspace Studios, Galway
2005 - Living and working in Westport Co. Mayo, Ireland
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
Sept '10 "fieldworks and fragments", Clifden Arts Festival , Clifden , Co. Galway
July '10 "fragments of memory - elements of light", The Waterfront gallery, The Quay, Westport, Mayo
Nov-Dec '09 "FRIEZE" Greyfriar's Municipal Gallery, Waterford, Ireland
August '09 "Notes from a silence" Hillsboro Fine Art, Parnell SQ West, Dublin, Ireland
July '09 "Notes from a silence" Galway Arts Festival, Galway, Ireland
2008/9 "Notes from a silence" Lapuan Taidemuseo, Finland
2006 "Terrain" Hillsboro Fine Art, Dublin,
Northcote Gallery, Kings Rd, Chelsea, London
2006 "Coast" Mardeplata & Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Montevideo, Uruguay,
Rio de Janeiro & Fortalessa, Brazil
- in association with L.E. Eithne & the Irish Navy
2005 "Terrain" Triskel Arts Centre, Cork
2004 "Soluna" Westport Arts Festival, Mayo
"Paintings ’04" Eigse Arts Festival, Carlow
"Meridian" Hallward Gallery, Merrion Square, Dublin
2003 "Cyphers" Triskel Arts Centre, Cork
Roscommon Arts Centre, Roscommon
"Paintings ‘03" Milcove Gallery, Co.Cork
"Selected Works" University Hospital, Galway
2002 "Cusp" Galway Arts Centre, Galway
2000 "Icons" Town Hall Gallery, Galway
1995 "Suibhne Geilt" Artaud Gallery, Theatre Artuad, San Francisco, USA
1994 "Ger Sweeney" European Parliament Buildings, Brussels, Belgium
"Ger Sweeney" Jean Rigaux Arts Centre, Brussels, Belgium
1993 "Ger Sweeney" Guinness Hop Store, Dublin
Foyle Arts Centre, Derry
Irish Arts Club, Eaton Square, London
Linenhall Arts Centre, Co. Mayo
1992 "Blue" Eigse Arts Festival, Carlow
Riverrun Gallery, Galway
1991 "Journey" Geoghegan Gallery, Galway
1990 "New Paintings" Clifden Arts Festival, Co.Galway
1989 "Muse" Garter Lane Arts Centre, Waterford
Wexford Arts Centre, Wexford
Galway Arts Centre, Galway
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2010 Group Shows
"Eigse -- Retrospective" Eigse Carlow Arts Festival - Retrospective, VISUAL Arts Centre, Carlow
B-ART-holomew Mosse - An Exhibition of Contemporary Irish Art" The Pillar Room. Rotunda Hospital,Dublin
"Europe`s Edge -- The Artist and The Island" ,Irish Contemporary Art Expo.
Tromso University Gallery, Tromso, Norway
Dec '09 "Small Works" Gordon Gallery, Derry, N.Ireland
Oct - Nov '09 "Selected Irish Artists" The Irish Club, London, UK. In Association with: The Barbara Stanley Gallery
Sept '09 "Western Light Northern Light" Galleria Dix, Helsinki, Finland
2006 ‘New Aquisitions’ Waterford City Council Municipal Collection, Greyfriars, Waterford
2006 ‘Contemporary Irish Art’ Heritage Park Gallery, Coatbridge, Glasgow, Scotland
2006 ‘Small Works’ Purple Onion Gallery, Roscommon
2006 ‘Summer Show’ Dyehouse Gallery, Waterford
2006 ‘Project 06’ Kenny’s Gallery, Galway
2003 ‘Six Irish Painters’ Jonathon Swift Gallery at Kilkenny Arts Festival
Wexford Opera Festival
‘Contemporary Irish Art’ Collyer-Bristow Gallery, London
‘Summer Show’ Hallward Gallery, Dublin
‘Three Years at The Linenhall’ Mayo General Hospital, Castlebar, Co.Mayo
‘Group Show’ Ballyreddin Studios, Bennetsbridge, Co.Kilkenny
2002 ‘Abstract’ Collyer-Bristow Gallery, London
The Stanley Gallery, London
‘Artwork’ C.Duell Gallery, Boston, USA
‘Compulsion’ Collectors Exhibition, Galway Arts Centre, Galway
Chimaera’ Linenhall Arts Centre, Castlebar
‘Summer Show’ Dyehouse Gallery, Waterford
‘Spectrum’ The Granary Gallery, Waterford
‘Dyehouse Artists at ’ Wexford Opera House
2001 ‘Chimaera’ Garter Lane Arts Centre, Waterford
1995 ‘Imaginaire Irlandais’ Lyon, France
‘Famine’ Claremorris, Co.Mayo
1994 Blue: Mayo Artists Linenhall Arts Centre, Co.Mayo
Eigse Festival, Carlow
Galway Printmakers UCG Gallery & Geoghegan Gallery
Dolan Moore Galllery, Athlone
Irish Club, London
Island Connection Exhibition Arts Club, Dublin Inishbofin, Co.Galway Clare Island, Co.Mayo Canary Islands
1989 Artspace Exhibitions Various venues (1989–1994) Galway, Dublin, Limerick
‘Fools Gold’ Winnower Gallery, Galway City
Arts Centre, Dublin
1987 ‘Ten’ Ashwagh Hall, East Hampton, Long Island, N.Y.USA
1983 G.P.A. Awards Exhibition Douglas Hyde Gallery,Trinity College Dublin
Graduate Group Show Soloman Gallery, Dublin
Graduate Exhibition NCAD Mansion House, Dublin
Claremorris Open Exhibition Claremorris, Co.Mayo
AWARDS & NOMINATIONS
G.P.A. Award Painting
U.N.E.S.C.O Award Visual Art & Theatre
C.O.E. Award Painting
Kilkenny Arts Award Visual Art, Painting
COLLECTIONS
European Parliament Collection, Belgium
O.P.W. Collection, Dublin, Waterford,
Mayo & Sligo
Guinness group
Dept. of The Taoiseach
Mayo Co. Council
Bausch & Lombe
First Active Bank, Dublin
S.I.A.C. Dublin
Waterford City Council
Carlow Co. Council
Collection of U.S. Ambassidor
Contemporary Irish Arts Society
Private & Corporate Collections, Ireland, UK, Europe, USA, Brazil, Argentina
2009 Reviews
HEADLINE: Painting the silent music of art
BYLINE:Áine Ryan
BOX: Catherine Marshall, Senior Curator at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Notes from a Silence.
LAYERS of light fuse and fade over the panorama that is Clew Bay as artist Ger Sweeney unfurls the secret logic of his work. It is almost 10pm and we are sitting at Westport quay.
It is now framed by the shadowed pyramidal outline of Croagh Patrick, the mysterious hulk of a distant Clare Island, the inner islands and the intrusion of gloomy outlines of dull architecture on the quayside.
What a perfect setting for Ger Sweeney to explain the dynamic and dialectic of his work – impelled variously by man’s interaction with nature. (See Aquajade.)
The title painting of Sweeney’s latest body of work, Notes from a Silence, should be interpreted in a number of ways, according to the artist.
“On the one hand it is ‘notes from a quiet place’, in another way it is has a resonance with its combination of colours and can create vibrations and different sounds,” explains Sweeney, deferring to the influence of the founder of abstractionism, Wassily Kandinsky.
“Ultimately any painting comes up with a whole compendium of thoughts, painting for me is a kind of mantra. If you have a pre-determined philosophy, where is the element of chance or of opportunity.”
Strata, continues Sweeney, also comes from an abstract base but has a strong sense of tactility and light, which has a landscape influence. It perfectly exudes Cezanne’s ‘blueness of air’ stretching to infinity but deceptively impermeable.
Nomad, for this writer, exudes the detached and ethereal tactility of an Edward Hopper painting, without the lonely comfort of the human form.
Ger Sweeney explains: “Nomad was envisaged when I was on the train in Finland. I was trying to capture an experience … a long journey at night with your thoughts. You are trying to paint and capture a sound and a memory with your thoughts.”
“We are all trying to capture something transient, but the thing is we are transient and not the landscape.” he continues.
Adding: “I don’t see a painting as an answer, I see it as a proposition. I’m most fascinated by the mystery it holds rather than a solution it provides.”
For Ger Sweeney his returning to Mayo, after many years living in Galway, Waterford and the United States, has been an important influencing factor in the evolution of his work. It is hardly surprising that this move to the edge of the whimsical Atlantic – has, to an extent, gradually subjugated the formality of his work and celebrated the more spontaneous presence of light.
“The real challenge is putting light into the abstract, a positive light.”
One of this writer’s favourites November juxtaposes light and darkness in a novel and deeply effective way, albeit by the simple change of direction of the artist’s brushstrokes. In this Pillar of Light series, Sweeney evokes a tactile, yet elusive, sense of timelessness. This is – as is characteristic – the result of the application of pure abstract and theoretical based work, a very strong connection with the elements of landscape, the fleeting memories of light and the evocation of music.
His genesis as a photo-realist and faithful subscriber to formal theoretical abstraction has now opened up into a language that is broader than all of that.
Curiously, he says that his work has become a lot calmer since his return to Mayo, but also admits that this is notwithstanding the fact that this calmness is often captured amid the elemental storms that rattle his remote studio and inspire his artistic eye.
Ger Sweeney’s Notes from a Silence is on show at the Galway Arts Festival Gallery, 1 Merchants Road, until Sunday, July 26. Monday to Saturday: 11-5.30pm. Sunday 12noon-5.30pm.
Box.
Catherine Marshall, Senior Curator at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Notes from a Silence.
“Sweeney’s paintings bring us right back to the fundamental position. They present us with spaces, whether urban and architectural in some of his earlier works or coastal and rural , that are suffused with light but restricted in depth, Space is layered with light planes, like mirages of water on a sun-soaked road. You are drawn towards them but afraid that if you succeed in negotiationg the layers of light in paintings such as First Light 1 and, especially in Nomad, the gleam that attracted you mist will have disappeared into nothingness.”
ends
Irish Times review of Galway Arts Festival show Notes from a silence 22nd July 09
Sweeney is an established, confident painter and the body of work he shows is called Notes from a silence.
The basic elements of his pictorial language are colour and light.
He moves colour around, mixing, pushing, sliding and shaping it. A feeling of space, and perhaps landscape emerges from this process, though he often stops us from settling too comfortably into any illusion of a pictorial space by abutting quite different expanses, areas that suggest mutually contradictory readings. It’s a way of keeping us guessing, of keeping our eyes busy, and it does.
Written by Aidan Dunne
GER SWEENEY Notes on painting 09
A “silence” evoking a contemplation, a listening, a tranquillity or interlude.
I try to create an “open” visual space………allowing the viewer to engage on their own terms, in a sense the viewer completes the painting “Silence”, not unlike abstraction is difficult to find or create…………………Rothko made it look easy!
The possibility of engaging with colour as a “visual sound” – rhythms, resonance, dissonance, composition and surface vibration or energy intrigues me.……. John Cage spoke of silence being itself a sound!
The “profound silence” of landscape is an ongoing preoccupation, both directly and through the influence of many painters such as Friedrich, Hopper, Soulages, and Oulten and including such Irish painters as O’Malley and Henry.
In a sense there is a preoccupation with light or the painting of light.
Invariably the painting is abstracted from its referants and realised on its own terms.
Elements of the Irish coastline are a recurring source of inspiration, where eschewing local detail enables me to distil the essence.
Recent and current works explore the use of texture, primarily a corrugating of the surface through layering of paint.
Van Gogh once noted that he “ploughed and tilled” the cornfields, that the impact of the “elements” should be visible in his application of paint..............! ? The “makingness” or stratification lends an object quality to the work, replacing the figuration of source material and suggesting alternative possibilities or readings as it evolves.
Paintings
“Strata” paintings – “abstracted“ from the cliffs and sea-stacks along the West Coast…………..a timeworn record of the clash of the elements - to form a painting that reveals the residue of its making.
“White” paintings - “Terrain of light”, “Open ground”, “Usuyuki” – (a Japanese term for – a fading beauty or - a light on melting snow). These paintings were the result of a visit to Finland in winter 08 when the snow illuminates the flatlands.
“Theatre of light” paintings – “Pillar of light”, “November“, “Amber lightfall “and “Winter silence”.
In these works “painting as light” is the central agenda. A core element for me that represents inspiration and optimism.
“Fragment” and “Elements” – the combining of seemingly disparate elements who’s union develops a synergy and constitutes a whole.
“Nomad” and “A paler sun” – memories of a train journey – sound and motion – the fleetingness of time – a metaphor for the human condition.
“River totems” – reflections in water - momentary enigmatic glimpses – freeform compositions in continual flux - a frozen record of motion and elusiveness.
Ultimately I am working in age old language and medium, which I hope acknowledges some of its finer practitioners, celebrates the relevance of painting today and suggest possibilities for the future.
Ger Sweeney 09