About this Event
Exhibition open to view from 3pm, Opening In Conversation from 3.30pm
To mark the opening Material Flux, a two person exhibition by artists Isabel Nolan and Aleana Egan, they will be in conversation from 3.30pm, to discuss their approaches to this exhibition which leans into the special character of Highlanes Gallery.
Both artists share an interest in using a broad array of media to create atmospheric, restless exhibitions often with roots in literary writing.
Hear more about their existing and new work for Material Flux which will nudge, play with and exploit the ways in which religious architecture mediates encounters with matter and meaning.
Tea, Coffee & Prosecco will be served.
This is a standing event with seating offered those with any additional needs.
The talk will be Irish Sign Language (ISL) signed.
About
Isabel Nolan has an expansive practice that incorporates sculptures, paintings, textile works, photographs, writing and works on paper. Her subject matter is similarly comprehensive, taking in cosmological phenomena, religious reliquaries, Greco-Roman sculptures and literary/historical figures, examining the behaviour of humans and animals alike. These diverse artistic investigations are driven by intensive research, but the end result is always deeply personal and subjective. Exploring the “intimacy of materiality”, Nolan’s work ranges from the architectural – steel sculptures that frame or obstruct our path – to small handmade objects in clay, hand-tufted wool rugs illuminated with striking cosmic imagery, to drawings and paintings using humble gouache or colouring pencils. In concert, they feel equally enchanted by and afraid of the world around us, expressing humanity’s fear of mortality and deep need for connection as well as its startling achievements in art and thought. Driven by “the calamity, the weirdness, horror, brevity and wonder of existing alongside billions of other preoccupied humans”, her works give generous form to fundamental questions about the ways the chaos of the world is made beautiful or given meaning through human activity.
In late 2020, Launchpad and Kerlin Gallery published ‘Curling up with reality’, bringing together a decade of Nolan’s work including significant exhibitions and 20 of the artist’s writings.
Isabel Nolan lives and works in Dublin.
Working primarily with sculpture, and occasionally with painting and film, Aleana Egan engenders psychological states and memories through enigmatic arrangements of objects and forms. Her sculptural works appear restrained, but are laden with subtle references to the built environment. An airy, slender metal structure might echo an architectural form plucked out of the landscape, while her use of simple household materials – plaster, cardboard, matte paint and various fabrics – speak to the domestic. Egan’s practice is shaped by her deep engagement with works of literature and cinema: never opting for direct representation, she uses this source material as an entryway, absorbing the moods and tones it evokes. Her forms and shapes act as traces or shifting responses, tentative articulations of remembered places or everyday moments. A meandering, sensuous line and sense of fluidity is carried from her sculptures into her film and painting, giving form to a sense of flux, openness and mutability.
Aleana Egan lives and works in Dublin.
Images:
1: Isabel Nolan, Gas Giant, 2012, mixed fabric, 196 x 103 cm
2: Aleana Egan, fusional, 2024, mixed media on canvas, 59 x 73 cm
Images courtesy of the artists and Kerlin Gallery.
Final image - Aleana Egan and Isabel Nolan during a site visit to Highlanes Gallery, February, 2024
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Highlanes Gallery, 36 Saint Laurence Street, Drogheda, Ireland
EUR 0.00
