Black & Tan

Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Chancery Lane, Dublin Until Apr 3 01-4759514

He’s best known as a fine painter of portraits, the human figure and the landscape. But Mick O’Dea has, in the past, made a series of works that feature cast of toy soldiers in play-confrontations. O’Dea reveals the genesis of this work in discussing his latest paintings with Catherine

Morris for her essay on his exhibition at Kevin Kavanagh, Black & Tan.

During his childhood in Ennis, O’Dea would, he told her, play toy soldiers in the family bar in the company of ex-British servicemen. Here he reaches further back in time to reconsider the role of the Black Tans in the War of Independence.

There is a forensic quality to his research as he trawls visual documents of the time and brings us back to a fraught, violent period of Irish history. As Morris puts it: “There is no easy narrative. Every face casts a shadow.”

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Open/Invited EV+A 2010 Limerick School of Art and Design, LIT Clare St Campus, Limerick City Gallery of Art, Carnegie Building, Pery Sq, plus other venues Until May 23 061-310633