Kevin Mooney’s new exhibition, Fragments of San Borondon, traverses boundaries between history and myth. His paintings and sculptures originate from his curiosity about the histories of migration of Irish people to Caribbean islands in the 17th and 18th centuries and also his interest in the culture making actions of migrants in general. Chosen as part of an Open Call by Triskel in 2018, the exhibition opened in Triskel’s Gallery Space on Thursday 5 September at 6pm and will run until 31 October.
ARTIST TALK
Kevin will be in conversation with Austin McQuinn, artist and writer, on Tuesday 29 October at 1pm in Triskel Gallery Space. All are welcome.
Artist and writer, Austin McQuinn has had solo exhibitions and performances at DCP, San Francisco, Project, Dublin and Butler Gallery and Kilkenny Castle. His work is held in public and private collections in Ireland, UK and USA. His upcoming book titled Acoustic Creatures: Sounding animality in performance will be published by Penn State University Press in Spring/Summer 2020.
Fragmentary, historical and anarchic, these works challenge perceived notions of native folk cultures. The work flourishes in Mooney’s broad reimagining of what it might mean to be a cultural emigrant. Rooted in his own migratory experience, this fantastical proposition of the imagined iconography of San Borondon becomes a kind of retrieval of a “lost” art history in the complex encounter between an emigrant and the native “other”.
Mooney’s materials are both established and fresh but he always plays with the notion of time. He continued, “I use clay, sticks, oil paint, rough jute, nails and varnish to echo the 17th century artists working across mainstream European, African and folk art idioms so as to connect with them, conceptually and idiomatically.” Mooney’s works appear both in this contemporary moment, and outside of time. Some appear aged and slightly broken down, as artefacts from an unknowable era. The works play with imagery and languages from historically and temporally disparate cultures, compressing time and history into the immediate space of the canvas or the sculpture. This immediacy and urgency brings an aliveness to the fore in Mooney’s deeply felt and historically informed practice.
Drawing from the power of fetishes of indigenous art such as N’Kisi power figures and Mexican votive paintings, as well as John Hinde’s postcards, Paul Henry’s paintings, and Prehistoric Stone Art from Newgrange or Loughcrew, Mooney reveals to us his own new language of filtrated influence and urgent response to his own experience of the living world. This exhibition traces his personal trawl through cultural memory. By mapping and re-tracking his route through loss, retrieval and renewal, in this exhibition he reclaims his own cultural migratory past, and re-imagines an iconographic future.
