Some sparkling individual exhibitions stood out, with Barrie Cooke thebrightest star in the Irish art sky, writes Aidan Dunne
Even for someone relatively well-acquainted with his work, the Barrie Cooke retrospective, this year's Nissan Art Project at the RHA in September, was a revelation. With its overriding organic imperative, its tremendous vigour and attack, its zest for moment, it was a rich, enlivening experience. The enjoyment and sheer good cheer of the huge opening-night crowd was palpable. Obviously it didn't form part of the remit of the retrospective, but it is worth mentioning that Cooke's contribution to cultural life in Ireland extends beyond his own work. During the time that he lived in Thomastown in Co Kilkenny, and latterly in Co Sligo, as a board member of the Butler, Model and the Douglas Hyde Galleries, he has been a real visionary presence with a remarkable sense of possibility. His role was particularly important in bringing major artists from abroad to show in Ireland, and his excellent rule of thumb was always go to the artist, not the agent.
Hughie O'Donoghue had an extraordinary, and extraordinarily busy, year. His fine Rubicon Gallery solo show, Baia: some recent paintings, was but one aspect of what can be thought of as a vast project, Paintings Caserta Red, unveiled at the Imperial War Museum in London in June (and currently showing at the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester), with a related book, Hughie O'Donoghue: Painting, Memory, Myth, by James Hamilton (Merrell, £29.51). Drawing extensively on his father's wartime archive of correspondence, journals and memorabilia, he constructed an epic account of the impact of earth-shaking events on ordinary individuals. But, as with almost everything he does, the work was also an exploration of art's potential to make good loss and say something of the personal meanings that infuse our lives.
The Butler Gallery's autumn exhibition of sculpture by New York-based Ursula Von Rydingsvard was outstanding. Her roughhewn cedarwood sculptures, constructed and carved with a circular saw, use common, recognisable forms: vessels, bodies and, here, a staircase, and have an immensely powerful presence. From Poland, she spent many of her early years as a displaced person in Germany before the family found its way to the US, and this experience surely influences the rugged, hard-won beauty of her work with its appeal to the preciousness and ritual of everyday life. But whatever its genesis, her work is powerful and memorable.
At the beginning of the year, Nick Miller's mammoth exhibition of landscapes at the RHA, Figure to Ground, was a tremendous achievement. Made from the vantage point of a mobile studio - an adapted truck - the work confounded expectations by exploiting this mobile platform, not to travel far and wide, but to get in close to the colour and texture of the local landscape. In fact, most of the places depicted are within a radius of just a few kilometres of Miller's home in Co Sligo. He succeeded in conveying a sense of the impossibly dense, layered richness of the visible world and in figuring out how to do landscape in a new way - no minor feat.
In a more subtle vein, Cristina Iglesias's solo show at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in July provided a terrific sequence of enveloping installations, playing with our sense of space and materials, disorientating our habitual reading of our physical environment. Difficult to stage a retrospective of the work of a performance artist, but the Ormeau Baths Gallery did very well last January with its Alistair McLennan, a fitting tribute to an indispensable presence on the Irish art scene for many years. Gary Hume proved to be incredibly popular at IMMA in April with a very good show of paintings and sculpture. Finola Jones's The Pleasure of Compulsive Self-Destruction was a very successful public art project in Carlow in April. In a different vein, Sean Scully's very publicly sited, monumental Wall of Light was unveiled at Limerick University in October.
Among the solo shows that stand out were Paul Mosse at Green on Red in June, Charles Tyrrell on top form at the Fenton in June, Graham Gingles at the Peppercanister in September, Richard Gorman's homerun at the Kerlin in February, Brian Bourke's suite of paintings, Women Giving Birth to Men, at the Taylor in September, while Nathalie de Pasquier was at the Rubicon, Janet Mullarney at the Taylor in October, Melita Denaro's Donegal landscapes there in March, Jacqueline Stanley's Islands and Ocean at the Vangard in July and the Hallward in October, Dermot Seymour's Dog at the Kevin Kavanagh in March, Amy O'Riordan's photographic show there in November, Patrick Pye's "dream show" at Jorgensen Fine Art in October, Dara McGrath's photographs of the emergent Ireland of bypasses and motorways at Draíocht in July and John Duncan's topographical photographs of Belfast's changing cityscape at Belfast Exposed in October.
Not all the best shows in what was a very good year for solo exhibitions, but some of the most memorable.
