Caoineadh/Elegies

Droichead Arts Centre, Stockwell St, Drogheda, Co Louth Tues-Sat 10am-5pm Until Apr 25 041-9833946Eoin Mac Lochlainn's Caoineadh/Elegiesbegan as a response to the suffering generated by warfare. Once he'd embarked on his series of close-up studies of heads, however, the scope of what he was doing broadened out according to its own logic.

“Other themes have emerged in the work,” he writes. “Ideas relating to the media and spectacle, notions of identity and ‘otherness’ and ideas about seeing (and not seeing) in the contemporary world.”

In a way he seeks to still the constant flow of images that greet us every day, to humanise what is otherwise an undifferentiated mass of anonymous others. We do not know the individual stories of the people whose faces dominate his paintings (such as What I’ve Seen, No 1, No 4, above), but we recognise their emotion and can instinctively empathise with what we see. Often, the most compelling part of an image is centred on the eyes, which most clearly express what remains unsaid.

CAN’T SEE THAT? CATCH THIS

Town CountryMonster Truck Gallery, 73 Francis St (Until April 14th) and Across the Way Gallery, Kinsealy (Until April 17th)