Galway Advertiser 1994/1994_09_29/GA_29091994_E1_023.pdf 

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ast F r i d a y J o h n H u n t of the H u n t Museum in L i m e r i c k opened a splendid new show in T h e A r t C e n t r e called 'Odyssey', featuring recent w o r k by S h a r o n O'Malley. Jeff O'Connell spoke with t h e Galway-based artist about h e r new paint ings a n d their rootedness in t h e images of classical mythology. 1. M Y T H AND A R T The stories, themes and images of mythology have an enduring fascination. Whether we are dealing with the mythic quest of the hero, which the great writer Joseph Campbell argued was one of humanity's central myths, or the darkly mysterious myth of King Oedipus, into which Freud injected his singular interpretation, we find that throughout recorded and, if we consider the visual creations of a time before written language, unrecorded history, we have told stories designed to make sense of the complicated and frequently danger ous business of living in the world.

Sharon O'Malley's Mythic Vo

R.H.A. Gallery. Since her first solo exhibition, 'Ancient Presence', at The Arts Centre in 1991, which travelled in 1992 to the Project Arts in Dublin and the Yeats Gallery in Sligo, she has exhibited steadily at The Arts Centre, with 'Oracle' in 1993, which travelled to the European Modern Art Gallery in Dublin, and an exhibition of 'Recent Work' at the Jameson Gallery in Middle ton, County Cork. Her work has attracted the favourable attention of two of Ireland's foremost art critics, Brian Fallon, who praised the mythologically-inspired work in 'Oracle' as displaying "courage and ndependence....in the face of virtually every contemporary movement or trend", and concluded by observing that "this is the kind of painting that thrives by taking risks", and Bruce Arnold, who described the work in the 'Ancient Presence' exhibition as "a series of stylised but essentially alive and mobile representations of dance and drama, painted mainly in oils in large-scale compositions in which colour, tex The realm of the mythic is mysterious. Why should ture, balance and life work exceedingly well", and certain stories, certain themes, certain images awaken observing that "she has a natural talent with paint, and in us a response that seems to the person having it to be an innate sense of movement". both incredibly important and yet, at the same time, The thirty-one works in Sharon O'Malley's 'Odyssey' almost impossible to translate into any other terms than exhibition display all of these qualities admirably. Both those in which it presents itself? Fallon and Arnold remarked on the quality and texture Definitions are not much help. Myth, by its very of her use of paint, especially, Fallon remarked, "the nature, resists being captured in the nets of logic use of stony tone and texture". This is finely shown in because a myth is, as Sharon O'Malley puts it in her such paintings as Transitional Return' and the beautiful programme note, "elastic and ambiguous like the say 'Requiem', where the use of impasto technique creates a ings of the Oracle". tactile impression that is strikingly offset by the Reference to the Oracle brings us, quickly, to the smoothness of the rest of the painting. very heart of things. For in ancient times, and right This quality of smoothness, along with a subtlety of up into the first centuries of the Christian era, men colour is superbly realised in a painting called, appro and women travelled long distances to consult oracles priately, 'Harmony (Terpsichore & Pan)' where the soft at places like Delphi. Questions of all kinds were colours harmonise with the delicately rounded forms of asked of the priestess of the oracle, who would then the two figures, perfectly expressing the musical reso give the answer from the god Apollo, whose oracle at nances of both Terpsichore, the muse of dance, and Delphi was the most famous of all. These answers, To discover this sought-after new approach, she Pan, the wild, goat-footed god, associated with unbri originally in poetic form, were ambiguous and open to ing-filled' world. They re-connect us with a realm of found herself remembering her Grecian and East expansive meaning that goes beyond rational explana dled sensuality. a variety of interpretations, just as the story embodied Asian experiences as well as reading and thinking tion. number of paintings echo the exhibition's title in a myth is and, we might add, as the meaning of a this is why it is traditionally so difficult to express about the nature of her art. Quite naturally, she "Odyssey', referring to the journey back to his visual or verbal equivalent of a myth is as well returned to an older, earlier inspiration, that of classi the meaning of a painting or a poem that draws native island of Ithacha of the Greek hero, he meaning of a myth and the images through cal mythology. In the work she has done since making Odysseus, after the Trojan War. 'Diplomat's Battering on the imagery of myth in any other terms than which it is presented by the artist require some this shift she has found herself more and more those actually used by the artist or poet: to 'get at' the Ram II' is a witty comment on the sly, very 'un-diplothing more than mere understanding; it requires employing the themes and images of mythology as an meaning involves an active interchange between the matic' way the besieging Greeks finally captured Troy participation, a process in which the whole sensibility is artistic 'vocabulary', which allows her, as she work of art and the participating observer. There exists by way of the Trojan Horse; 'Under Siege I' portrays involved, and a process, furthermore, in which we can a whole discipline called Aesthetics which tries to artic explains, to '"present a dialogue between the contem Helen, whose fatal beauty proved the occasion of the only discover meaning if we suppress the dismantling porary physical world and the cyclical nature of exis ulate this immediacy of encounter and, so long as we ten-year Trojan War, while T h e Eye of the Beholder' function of the rational mind, which is unhappy with tence", or, as she gracefully puts it, "to follow don't think our tidy explanations are the final word, it focuses on the one-eyed Cyclops from whose cave ambiguity and multiple meanings, and allow the image Orpheus in seeking harmony and perfection of form". Odysseus had to use his famous cunning to escape. can be useful. But the created work is primary, and to 'work' on us. after we have finished all our talk of 'Neorealism', or Her subject matter is both intensely personal and uni One of the most immediately impressive paintings in When we look at a painting, say Botticelli's famous 'Expressionism', the work, if it is successful, retains its versal and encompasses such fundamental themes as this exhibition is 'Matriarch', a large (152 x 92 cm) oil 'Primavera' which contains a host of mythological refer mystery. the search for knowledge ("The Sage" in the current on canvas and wood depicting the Queen of the ences, the natural tendency is to ask: what is this paint exhibition); the exploration of male and female stereo 2. T H E A R T I S T & T H E W O R K Olympian gods and goddesses. Here the hieratic gesture ing about? Now, there is no question but that we natu types (as in such paintings as 'In the Image of Man' Sharon O'Malley was born near Coventry in England of the Queen of Heaven in her maternal form is empha rally seek to understand. But too much art criticism is where she employs the myth of Pygmalion who brings and her fascination with classical mythology - the sised by the prominence in the foreground of a golden 'analytical', a Greek word that means to loose, untie, to life an image of Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love); myths of Greece and Rome - really dates from a won egg that seems to float out from its darker background, dissolve, break down, and - two particularly significant and the age-old mystery of life and death (in the simple giving the whole composition a feeling of the uncanny. derful cruise tour she went on when she was 12 years meanings - to put an end to, or to violate. All concepts old. "We visited all the famous places - Delphi, Athens, and powerful Diptych, 'Entrance I' and 'Entrance II', In fact, the dominant impression anyone familiar with that belong to logic, that crystallising of the activity of both subtitled 'Gnosti Seauton' which means, roughly, Ephesus, Knossos on Crete. I can even now distinctly the art of ancient Greece is how Sharon O'Malley has reason which the Greek dramatist, Aeschylus, said was the knowing of life, in which the figure of a dolphin remember absolutely remember every detail of the trip. captured its essential spirit with uncanny skill. 'of all things most hateful to the gods'. diving into the water and rising from it symbolises the It had a big influence on me." 'Odyssey'. Sharon O'Malley's superb exhibition at The Understanding myth, on the other hand, has to do, as two rhythms of life and death, with the consequent new Arts Centre, is certainly one of the most striking I've After completely her secondary schooling Sharon Sharon O'Malley suggests by quoting Plato, with re or re-birth). went to Belfast College of Art where she graduated seen in a long time. The only comparisons that come to membering. Again, etymology is illuminating, for in Sharon finds it quite natural to express herself with an Honours B.A. in Fine Art Painting in 1981. mind, so far as maturity of vision and confidence of Latin 'remember' concretely suggests the idea of going through the images of classical mythology. When asked style are concerned, would be the recent Kenny Gallery After graduation she took off travelling and, as well as back to the starting point, or the original place or posi if she would ever see herself moving over into Irish revisiting some of the places she had first seen when exhibition 'Porcelain & Paint, where the echoes of clas tion. A synonym of remember is even more vivid: to re mythology she explains that 'although I think it's very she was 12 years old, she pressed on to Indonesia and sical pottery in its simplicity of technique demonstrated member is to re-collect. beautiful and very powerful, it's not mine. I would have the enduring beauty of such traditional forms; Catherine Thailand, and here she was greatly impressed by the Alan Watts describes myth as 'a complex of stories to 'learn' it and that would, I think, show itself in what way the art and religion and mythology of these two Harper's stunning exhibition, A Beginning', at The Arts some no doubt fact, and some fantasy - which, for vari ever use I might make of it in my work." countries formed a unity. Centre a few years ago in which she drew her inspira ous reasons, human beings regard as demonstrations of She began her career as an artist working in the fash Sharon was, in 1986, a founder-member of Artspace tion from the remarkably preserved bog bodies of the inner meaning of the universe and of human life'. ionably abstract style of the late 70's and early 80's, but Studios in Galway and she has exhibited regularly in Ireland, England and Scandinavia to create forms that The stories and the characters in the stories provide the eventually grew dissatisfied with its limitations, and Galway since 1982, when she took part in a Group seemed to emerge from a distant and incredibly strange images that the artist makes use of, whether this be in a now, as she puts it, T m not interested in work that 'says Show at Nun's Island. Since then she taken part in past; and Paki Smith's exhibition at The Arts Centre poem or a work of visual art. nothing'." This echoes the forthright statement of the numerous group exhibitions around the country, such as some years back in which he employed motifs from And underlying all is the assumption (not belief, Russian artist, Kandinsky, himself one of the early mas the S.A.D.E. Exhibition at Cork's Crawford Gallery in Cretan art and mythology to great effect. because to believe is a conscious act of the individual) ters of the abstract movement, who declared t h a t ' the 1987; the Artspace 'Myriad' Exhibition, which toured to / urge you to visit this wonderful exhibition, which that the world itself is meaningful or, better, 'meaningartist must have something to say, for mastery over Limerick and Wexford; the 1989 W.A.A.G. Exhibition displays the talents of one of the most exciting young filled'. The images of the artist like Sharon O'Malley form is not his goal but rather the adapting of form to held at Kilmainham Hospital in Dublin; and the Rubato artists in Ireland are so powerful because they speak to us of that 'mean its inner meaning'. Exhibition - 'Dance Strokes - Artist and Dancer' in the

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INSIDE THIS WEEK: NEW SHARON SHANNON ALBUM