Artist's Statement
The slow, imprecise nature of oil painting results mostly in images that are detached from the present time. Furthermore, because of limited resolution, the images are also inexact records of reality. They are like flashbacks: interjected scenes that take the narrative back in time from the current point in the story. They are the back catalogues of a life, ideas and memories made tangible. In this age of artificial intelligence and instant digital reproducibility, works in paint have priorities other than information content: they can offer a different reading of the source material and can find very different essences in it.
There is much common ground between these two artists: they are ‘exporters’ of electronic imagery from the current plethora into that old, slow, painstaking medium of oil painting. Imagery is appropriated from family photos, film and concert footage, social and mainstream media. The resultant harvest forms their visual research and archive. In turn, the material is filtered through each artist’s individual lens: cropped, manipulated, saturated, selected or rejected, printed, archived.
No previous generation of artists has been assailed with such copious imagery and this is especially true since the advent of the smartphone and image-sharing social media platforms. As sifters of imagery, both artists are interested in why certain images, out of the profusion, are finally selected for painting. The artistic process involves an iterative and empathic response, elevating the seemingly most banal of imagery through the touch of brush and hand.
Gillian Kenny Shinnors' Biography
Gillian Kenny Shinnors was born in Limerick. She studied painting at the Limerick School of Art and Design graduating with a first class honours degree and then completed her MFA at the University of Ulster, Belfast. She was awarded the Countess Markievich medal for painting by the United Arts Club Dublin during her student days. She has exhibited her work regularly at venues such as EV+A at Istabraq Hall, the Hunt, and Limerick Printmakers, and the Lab Foley Street Dublin. Gillian completed a large-scale solo exhibition curated by Mike Fitzpatrick at Limerick City Gallery entitled “A Place to Stay” in 2008. She has also exhibited her paintings at the Spectrum Gallery London, The Phatory New York, and the Engine Gallery Toronto. Her work is also held in private collections all over the world. She is a mother of two girls and an educator. She has been involved in many social practice and community projects over the years including the Arts Council Artist in Prison Scheme. She has a studio in the Wickham Street Studios collective space. Her palette is vivid and references Kodachrome and Technicolour film, and her work has been described by Irish Times Critic Aidan Dunne as ‘crisply and expertly painted.’
Gerry Burke's Biography
Gerry Burke grew up in Dublin with roots in the Joyce Country Gaeltacht of north Connemara. As a teenager, he was a pupil of the academic portrait painter, George Collie, RHA, who encouraged him to become a painter, which he actively considered. In the end, however, he studied medicine and painted only intermittently thereafter. He was an obstetrician and gynecologist for over a quarter of a century in Limerick with responsibility for thousands of births. He had a particular interest in the prevention of late stillbirth and neonatal brain injury, and in perinatal mental health. In the final year of his work as a doctor, he was chief clinical director for the region’s acute hospitals during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. He regularly shared resource data with the people of the mid-west, through mainstream and social media, to help them to understand the reasons behind the access difficulties being experienced in the region. In 2020, after almost five decades, he returned to painting and rented a studio in the city centre. He graduated from the RHA School in 2023. He has exhibited work at the Svitlo fundraising exhibition for refugees from Ukraine at the Church Gallery at LSAD and in the annual Dunamaise Arts Centre’s Open Call exhibition last winter. He has been awarded an artist residency in Berlin for the summer of 2024.
Opening Times
Monday: Closed,
Tuesday – Saturday: 10am – 5pm,
Sunday: 11am – 5pm.
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