Common Thread

Maighread Tobin

1 Cover: Scratched Ovoid’s, Oil on gesso panel, 52.5 x 61cm, 2019

2 3 Common Thread

Maighread Tobin

Limerick City Gallery of Art 8th July – 12th September 2021

4 5 Contents

Foreword page 10

Common Thread page 12 Niamh Nic Ghabhann

In Conversation page 18 Frances McDonald with Maighread Tobin

Works page 23

6 7 Landscape, 2020, oil on gesso panels, 122 x 420cm (7 parts)

8 9 Foreword

Limerick City Gallery of Art (LCGA) is delighted to host the My sincere thanks to Niamh NicGhabhann for her insightful exhibition, Common Thread, by Limerick-based artist, Maighread essay and to Frances McDonald for her illuminating conversation Tobin. This will be Tobin’s first instituional solo show and will centre with the artist. I also want to thank the amazing team here at LCGA. on her continued passion with gardens. It is timely that we should I wish to thank the wider public whose continued support, in these be coming out of the interminable gloom of “lockdown” to the post-Covid days, allows us to recognise the importance of galleries, lightness of this exhibiton – a veritable Garden of Earthly Delights such as LCGA, for their redemptive role while we navigate our way back to normality. Tobin has worked on this exhibiton over the past three years and within all seasons, and she has studied and extracted materials This exhibition will continue the Gallery's interest in exploring from numerous gardens, made studies and created work inspired works with a botanical focus and conlcude the three-year cycle by the natural environment.The artist has developed a body of which included the work of Karl Blossfeld, Naomi Draper and work that explores a particular environment she has visited many Fiona O' Dwyer. times, the National Botanical Gardens in Dublin. Spending time in this unique environment has allowed her to research a diverse I also wish to acknowldge our main funding bodies; Limerick City collection of tropical plants and other exotic species many of which and Counnty Council and The Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon cannot be seen anywhere else in Ireland, creating works that will whose financial support enables us to push artistic boundaries and incorporate both oil and mixed media on gesso board. engage with the public in a meaningful way.

In realising these paintings Tobin does not wish to recreate Above all I want to extend my sincere thanks to Maighread for botanical accuracy but to experiment with a varied colour pallet, working so generously with us to ensure that we could introduce structures and shapes, ultimately enjoying the experience of this new body of work to a loyal audience and bring her work to the working closely with her twin passions of nature and paint. The attention of others. artist will also investigate the notion of cataloguing the progression of plants throughout the seasons, documenting their changing forms and colours. Tobin is a graduate of LSAD and has recently started painting which is move away from her sculptural work for Úna McCarthy which she has a strong reputation. Director/Curator May 2021

10 11 Common Thread

Maighread Tobin Taking a step back, it might seem a little odd that so many artists have spent so much time responding to the natural world. It is, after all, right there (for now, at least). The trees come into leaf, Niamh Nic Ghabhann hum with green, turn red and yellow, crumble, and then return to black spidery silhouettes against the winter sky year after year. The light falls on the waves every day, and they sparkle most of the time. The sun sets, hills roll etc. It would make more sense, in a way, for artists to spend their paint and stone and energy picturing the unseeable – angels, devils, saints, palaces and monarchs, or even exotic scenes that are out of reach for most. And yet, the natural world has always been a subject for exploration by artists – a process of looking and re-looking, of holding moments of observation and experience in time in different ways. The art of the natural world can be seen as a kind of centuries-long conversation between humans and nature, encompassing themes of power, fear, attention, dependence, inspiration, freedom and ownership. This conversation has taken form across many registers – from Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s allegorical sculptures in which women turn into trees, narrowly escaping their attackers, to Christo and Jeanne- Claude’s 1976 Running Fence.

In the context of Irish art history, representations of landscapes have been produced in many different contexts, and with different motivations. The early modern maps that traced the contours of the island, for example, were inextricably linked to processes of colonisation, carefully delineating placenames and families associated with specific territories. Birds-eye demesne portraits set the cultivated and civilised grounds of the estate against the savage ‘wilderness’ beyond its boundaries. Picturesque images of genteel poverty in the landscape – bare feet hardly touching the stony ground – were the preference of the art market by the nineteenth century, not to mention images of ivy-clad sculpted crosses and crumbling churches, often lit by a setting sun. By the early twentieth century, the Irish landscape as a subject for

12 13 aesthetic experimentation, refracted through the innovations of Hilary Pyle reviewed an exhibition of Tobin’s work held at modernist ideas, as well as a space to project the dreams and Limerick’s Riverrun Gallery in April 1990, and described her as hopes of an independent nation. All this is to say that by the end ‘a creator of stone pictures’. Writing about Tobin’s career, Pyle of the twentieth century, artists in Ireland drawn to the subject remarked that ‘she starts with slate, limestone or marble, and of landscape in their practice had a raft of competing visions to uses leather or stained wood, sometimes a little paint, to draw contend with.1 Some works, like Kathy Prendergast’s Body Map her abstract designs’. Pyle’s review comments on the resonances Series (1983, IMMA collection) address this legacy head on, while of the natural world across the sculptures in the show – Swallow painters like Mairead O’hEocha break new ground in a landscape with an angular carved pattern that ‘speaks of flight, incessant tradition of formal experimentation and innovation. swooping flight’. She also found ‘medieval, charismatic’ elements within Tobin’s carved work.4 Pyle makes the connection between Maighread Tobin’s body of work is centrally concerned with Tom Fitzgerald’s sculptures in stone and Tobin’s work, and remarks the natural world. Writing about her practice for Limerick’s Hunt that ‘this relating of heraldic or ritual signs with sensual human Museum in 2014, she noted that her work had ‘almost always been elements, even prehistoric mannerisms, is not uncommon among influenced by my deep connection with my garden’, and that this contemporary Irish artists, particularly the sculptors, who are had ‘been a constant source of stimulation’. Tobin described the discovering the secrets and history of stone’. A Limerick Leader way in which the ‘real energy comes from the making; the physical review from June 1990 titled ‘Women artists: good examples’ activity, the sense of exploration which is so much part of the describes Tobin’s work as being ‘made of a variety of materials end result’. Tellingly, she states that her work is never intended (very much a Limerick tradition), and as being ‘suggestive of Celtic as a ‘literal transcription of a particular plant series, but rather a iconography and inspiration’.5 suggested recording of an experience or an observation’.2 These insights into Tobin’s practice are very helpful in tracing connections Thinking about Tobin’s sculptural approach to form in the broader across her the work in different media. From her early work in context of Irish art history certainly connects her to Fitzgerald, and stone and slate, to her more recent paintings, these key ideas are his use of relief carving and careful pattern-making (as in his Family evident – the energetic connection to nature and natural forms, the Fragments (1998) in the Hunt Museum), but also recalls Albert importance of processes and actions of exploration and response, Power’s Connemara Trout (1944, collection of the National Gallery and the act of catching experience, observation and sensation. of Ireland), emerging from a block of irregular green Connemara Tobin’s own words are echoed in Luke Clancy’s description of her marble. This line of inquiry connects her to the work of Dorothy practice as reflecting ‘an apparent desire to turn fish, birds, flowers Cross, in the integration of natural materials and forms in her into hieroglyphic representations of themselves’.3 sculpture, and in their shared concern with experience, physicality, movement and process in their exploration of the natural world. Indeed, Tobin’s striking Mask With Twig (2011), in the National Self- 1 The history of Irish landscape painting was the subject of a comprehensive exhibition, titled Shaping Ireland: Landscapes in Irish 4 Hilary Pyle, ‘Maighread, a creator of stone pictures’, Irish Examiner Art, held at the National Gallery of Ireland from 13 April-7 July 2019. 14 April, 1990, pg. 2. 2 https://www.huntmuseum.com/event/coffee-corner-conversation-at- 5 ‘Women artists: good examples’, Limerick Leader, 23 June 1990, pg. 4. the-hunt/ (accessed 6 April 2021) 3 Luke Clancy, ‘Maighread Tobin’, Irish Times, 12 November, 1997.

14 15 Portrait Collection at the University of Limerick, connects with the patterns. In conversation with Tobin, she described the process work of Alice Maher, Janet Mullarney, and Cross in her combination of building her surfaces – preparing the layers of size and chalk of materials, and in her tightrope walk between the real and the for the gesso panel – and then using this as a plane to excavate surreal. The ‘Celtic’, ritual or prehistoric pattern making evident in through scratching and incising. Her use of gilding reflects her Tobin’s slate and stone sculptures places her work in a line that interest in medieval art, while her close attention to the sculptural includes Nano Reid and Louis le Brocquy, and in contemporary forms within the natural world – seed pods, for example – are in conversation with the sculptural, multi-media surfaces created by conversation with the Tate St Ives ceramicist Bernard Leach (1887- Maria Simonds-Gooding. 1967). The colours in her latest series of work range from volcanic reds, rusts and yellows, as well as deep, vibrant blues and greens A viewer of Tobin’s most recent works – richly coloured pieces in that recall stained glass windows. She cites William Crozier and oil on board and gesso panel – might be surprised to see this shift Charles Tyrell as key influences in her work, and this is evident in her in palette. While this burst into colour is striking, Tobin maintains use of glowing colours, but the rhythmic abstraction and assured her attention to two-dimensional surface patterning, building and combination of textured surfaces are very much her own. As well as stacking colours and forms on her painted surfaces. This shift towards the work involved in making the gesso panels, Tobin spoke about colour from slate and stone was evident in key transitional pieces the importance of gardening, of travel, and of hill-walking across such as her Rhythm, Cloak and Embrace (1999), commissioned by different landscapes to her work, drawing the thread of action South Dublin County Council and in the Civic Theatre Tallaght. The and movement as being central to her practice from her earliest piece, comprised of 3 panels of coloured rolled metal, is described sculptures to this most recent series of paintings. as suggesting the different moods and energies evoked by the theatre. In her artist’s statement on this piece, Tobin describes it In some ways, we might think of the history of landscape art as as introducing ‘curved and energetic’ shapes, with the sweeping being woven into ideas of escape – Bernini’s Daphne morphs into movement creating shadows, suggesting ‘movement, mood, and a laurel tree to save herself from Apollo’s rapacious advances, and atmosphere’.6 Tobin brings this attention to dynamic surface- Paul Henry’s dreamlike Connemara landscapes were admired by making in her most recent paintings, which also reflect inspirations largely urban audiences who contested with the smoke and noise from sources as diverse as medieval art and textile patterns from of industrial cities in their daily lives. Contemporary landscape art, across the globe to formal, sculpted gardens like the topiaries at however, takes on a new urgency in the context of the climate Leven’s Hall in Cumbria. crisis, and as the natural world falters under our continual demands. Maighread Tobin’s paintings are part of a contemporary call to pay While working in oil on board or gesso, Tobin’s most recent attention, to closely observe the world that we live with, rather series of paintings are linked to her prior work in slate, stone and than to trample it underfoot as we rush onwards. Her paintings lean metal. She uses clear, formal structures and clean shapes, and into beauty, and in that they are a gentle but insistent call to arms, with a sculptor’s attention to surface texture, delineates between a reminder to really look at what is underfoot and around us, and the different areas of the works with contrasting textures and above all, not to take it for granted before it is too late.

6 http://www.southdublin.ie/artsworks/viewwork.aspx?id=25 (accessed 6 April 2021) Niamh Nic Ghabhann © 2021

16 17 In Conversation Frances McDonald with Maighread Tobin FMD Maighread, your interest in landscape and the natural world has largely inspired your work to date. Is this still a primary concern?

MT Landscape has always been important to me. I’m privileged to live in a beautiful part of the world and find the surrounding countryside and my own garden a continuing source of inspiration. But over the years I’ve also had the opportunity to travel and witness things like the wild volcanic landscape in the Galápagos and in other parts of South America. Or, in contrast to that, to see how nature has been shaped in amazing gardens like Jardin Marjorelle in Morocco. The structural forms in the topiaries at Levens Hall in Cumbria have been a huge source of inspiration to me as magnificent arrangements of living sculptures. During my travels, I’ve sketched and taken photographs but, ultimately, I’ve immersed myself in my surroundings - really looked and listened. For me, it’s more than just observing form, texture and colour. It’s an all-encompassing experience around the complexity of plant forms and plant life.

FMD I’m seeing a stronger palette in this work. There’s more evidence of pattern and you’re also using some new materials. How has this influenced the outcome?

MT Yes, I’m really enjoying using oil pastel again; it’s given my work an interesting textural dimension. In the past, my sculptural work explored form and surface textures on a relief surface and I’ve still retained many of these elements in this work. But a lot of that previous work was monochromatic. Now, while I’m still mark making and building up tones, I’m more open to experimenting with strong colours and shapes.

18 19 In a way, the gessoed panel surfaces I’m using now are FMD Tell me about your impulse to create art. What drives similar to the slate I worked with in the past in that they can you to continue making? be scored and inscribed. For me the process of exploring materials has always been important. I’ve always allowed MT I’ve always had the desire to make. Even when other my work to develop slowly, repeatedly building up layers aspects of my life took me away from work, I never and sanding back, bringing observation and experience into completely stopped drawing or sculpting. I’ve always had making in order to expose underlying forms. The outcomes a strong pull to it – a desire to record and translate into reveal distinctive patterns that can be recognized as land my work what I have seen or experienced – and I still love markings, vessels, flower and plant forms, seascapes and spending time in the studio developing ideas. so on. I think this series has allowed me to push boundaries a little further, to construct and deconstruct with even FMD This exhibition takes place at Limerick City Gallery of Art more intent. (LCGA), in your home town. What’s the significance of that for you? FMD How do you describe your current work? It’s informed by plant life but cannot be categorised in this way. MT For many years almost all of my solo exhibitions and artistic career in general have been in Dublin or have been MT I describe them as abstract expressions that are largely international, so to be back at LCGA is especially significant representative of my ongoing engagement with the natural for me, particularly because this is the city where I launched world. They are driven by the nature of the materials I’m my career. LCGA has played such a significant role in working with, by the processes I use, by a strong sense of providing a platform for, and in nurturing, artists through its intuition and chance. While I’m in control, the element of gallery programme and through international exhibitions chance is always there. Materials and surfaces continually such as EVA. I’m delighted to have the opportunity to change – often revealing something unexpected. I’m exhibit here. staying open to the possibility of surfaces, shapes and forms that arrive or that are observed and can suggest a compositional starting point. They have a pattern and a buildup of other things that interest me, but I’m always willing to edit, to lose quite a lot to arrive at an image Frances McDonald © 2021 that’s greater than what was originally there, or that suggests more than the first offering. It’s a distillation and very much intuitive.

20 21 Works

22 23 Scratched Ovoid’s, oil on gesso panel, 52.5 x 61cm, 2019

24 25 5 cut flowers, mixed media, acrylic, oil on gesso panel, 31 x 26cm, 2019

26 27 Clusters, oil on gesso panel, 35 x 28cm, 2019

28 29 Scented Ampoules, oil on gesso panel, 28 x 35cm, 2020

30 31 Sea Anemow, oil on gesso panel, 51 x 36cm, 2020

32 33 Blue Pools, oil on gesso panel, 30 x 25cm, 2019

34 35 Forbidden Fruit, oil on gesso panel, 51 x 36cm, 2019

36 37 Orange Bridge, oil on gesso panel, 36 x 51cm, 2020

38 39 Pitcher Traps II, oil on gesso panel, 44.5 x 54.5 x 3cm, 2019

40 41 Mollusc, oil on gesso cedar wood, 66 x 14 x 7.5cm, 2021

42 43 Yellow Cascade, oil on gesso cedar wood, 91 x 25 x 3cm, 2021

44 45 Clearing Fog’, Oil on gesso panel, 30 x 23cm, 2020

46 47 Leaving Traces, oil on gesso panel, 28 x 35cm, 2020

48 49 Shakers, oil on board, 101 x 72.5cm, 2019

50 51 Bract, oil on board, 121 x 121cm, 2021

52 53 Tulip, oil on gesso panel, 30 x 25cm, 2020

54 55 Lace Cap II, oil on gesso panel, 28 x 35cm, 2020

56 57 Mottled I, oil on board, 61 x 46cm, 2019 Mottled II, oil on board, 61 x 46cm, 2019

58 59 Landscape, oil on gesso panels, 122 x 420 (7 parts), 2020

60 61 Solo Exhibitions Public Private Sculpture Collections

2009 Bourn Vincent Gallery, University of Limerick 2011 National Self Portrait Collection of Ireland University of Limerick 2008, 03, 00, 97, 95 Hallward Gallery Merrion Sq, Dublin 2006 Harbour, Waterways Ireland, Garrykennedy, Co Tipperary 1990 Riverrun Gallery, Dame St, Dublin Waterpanels, Riverpoint Building, Limerick 1984 Belltable Arts Centre, O'Connell St, Limerick 2005 Lilies, Limerick County Council, Croagh, Co. Limerick 2004 Limerick County Council, Castleconnell Public Art Commission 2003 OPW, Clifden Garda Station, Co. Galway 2000 Tellabs Ltd., Shannon, Co. Clare 1999 Tallaght Civic Theatre, Tallaght, Co Dubin Selected Group Exhibitions 1998 OPW, National Library of Ireland, KIldare Street, Dublin 2021 Common Thread, Limerick City Gallery 1993 National Collection of Contemporary Drawing, Ireland, Limerick City Gallery of Art 2020 Selection of works of limerick based Artists from the permanent Collection, LCGA 1991 Arts Council of Ireland collection, Dublin, Ireland 2015 Visions of Now, Limerick City Gallery of Art 1990 Bull & Bear, O’Riada Stockbrokers, 1 College Green, Dublin 2014 Persional Choice, Twenty Artists from Limerick School of Art and Design, 1989 Lyre, Irish National Insurance Quality Awards selected by John Shinnors Curator’s Choice, Hunt Museum, Limerick The Source Arts Centre, Thurles, Co Tipperary 2011 National Self Portrait Collection of Ireland, 2011 Additions University of Limerick Awards 2011, 10, 09, 08, 98 Boyle Arts Festival, Boyle, Co. Roscommon [Invited Artist] 2010 Retrospective [Invited Artist], VISUAL Eigse, Carlow Arts Festival 2003, 1998, 1984 Oireachtas Exhibition [Duais CAST, Sculpture], Duais Legal & Commercial Made in China, Glor, Ennis, Co. Clare Insurances Ltd. 2010, 05, 04, 96 Royal Hibernian Academy Annual Exhibition, Gallagher Gallery, Dublin [Invited artist] 1996 Alexandra Wejchert Award for Sculpture, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin 2010, from 2004 Millcove/ Hallward Gallery, Group Shows 1987 Sculpture Award, Claremorris Open Exhibition, Co Mayo 2008 Villa Bohm Group Exhibition, Neustadt on der Weinstrasse, Germany Made In Ireland, 411 Gallery, Shanghai, China. 2007 Made In Ireland, Embassy of Ireland, Beijing, China Presence, Limerick City Gallery of Art Residencies 2005 John Shinnors Selects, Glor, Ennis, Co. Clare. 2003 Sculpture In Context, National Botanical Gardens, Dublin. 2007 Cill Rialaig, Ballinskelligs, Co. Kerry 2001 Eigse [Invited Artist], Carlow Arts Festival 2000, 02, 03 CASE 2000, Lavitt Gallery, Cork 1994 Síolrú, RHA Gallery, Dublin 1992 - 2008 Hallward Gallery, Merrion Sq, Dublin 1991 Logos-Mostra Internazionale D’Art Con, Padova, Italy 3 Irish Artists, Milan and Brescia, Italy 1990 - 1998 Gateway to Art, Aer Rianta, Dublin Airport

62 63 Artists Statement

In this new body of work created over the past two and a half years the paintings, while abstract in expression, are representative of an ongoing dialogue with the natural world. Recently I was lucky enough to spend a couple of months traveling in South America and the Galapagos Islands - much of the work comes from being Limerick City Gallery of Art phone: +353 (0) 61 310 633 immersed in the landscapes and gardens of these far flung places Carnegie Building email: [email protected] in addition to the quiet of my own garden at home and the Pery Square web: www.gallery.limerick.ie countryside around me. Limerick twitter: @limerickgallery Ireland FREE ADMISSION The work is allowed to develop slowly. I build up many layers of gesso and paint inscribing into the surface, stripping and sanding back in a repeated process to expose the underlying surface detail and pattern. My work as a sculptor has given me the confidence to Curator: Úna McCarthy, construct and deconstruct in this way, and the resulting work often Editor: Siobhan O’Reilly reveals a complex history both on and beneath the surface. Design: Pure Designs Print: PrintRun Photography: Studioworks photography, Eamonn Mahony Artists Acknowledgements

I would like to express my thanks to Una Mc Carthy and Siobhan O ISBN: 978-0-9927969-8-3 Reilly for their great support and encouragement during the making of this work and especially during the difficult COVID 19 period. Many thanks to Niamh Nic Ghabhann for her very perceptive and First published by Limerick City Gallery of Art in 2021 considered analysis of the work and its development, skilfully © Limerick City Gallery of Art. conveyed in the essay in the catalogue. Also to Frances Mc Donald for conducting and recording the insightful Q&A session.

All images © the individual photographers. To Eamonn for his continued professionalism in creating the All text © the authors. photographic record and to the rest of the LCGA gallery team. All rights reserved.

Also to my family and friends and to Anne Brennan for her generous supply of inspirational books.

And especially to Mother who was so looking forward to seeing this show.

64 65 66 67 Common Thread

Maighread Tobin

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