Talk to Me is an interesting title for Oliver Comerford's exhibition at the Hallward Gallery, because the paintings for the most part depict vast, empty environments, utterly devoid of inhabitants except, occasionally, for the implied presence of the traveller who is observing these places. In fact, "places" is overstating it. Like frames from a road movie, the pictures are transitory glimpses of the spaces between places, of the blurred, anonymous views we see in the corner of our eye from the car window. They are, as well, seen as mediated by film, photography and video. Gerhard Richter and Peter Doig come to mind, not because their influence is particularly apparent - it isn't - but because they, too, deal with the relationship between painting and photography.
Talk to Me is largely inspired by a four-day visit to Iceland, but even when Iceland's bleak, snowy moonscape isn't the subject, there is something other-worldly about Comerford's take on things. This is a significant show for him, marking as it does a refinement of his thematic concerns and his technique. His images are in a way anti-images, images of nothing, of the arc of a wiper blade against a blur of conifer plantation, but collectively they are brilliantly evocative and atmospherically precise, partly because he has marked out the conceptual territory so carefully. And, as the Romantic landscape painters and makers of road movies alike have long since proved, desolate, empty landscapes framed by motion can have considerable emotional resonance.
John Graham's big carborundum prints at Green on Red make up a set of nine gestural "improvisations". Fast, blocky, rhythmic strokes, black on white, mark out all-over compositions. Each has a different character - for example, an angular as opposed to a curvilinear rhythm. So far, so simple. And the prints are elegantly simple, but they are very effective and have considerable presence. They are augmented by a much smaller, more problematic series of aquatints, white on black, like whimsical doodles.
Helen Farrell's show at the Paul Kane Gallery consists chiefly of a series of male nudes - something more than life studies, but not quite formidable works in their own right. She is good at conveying a sense of physical presence. There are hints here of something like Elizabeth Frink's fascination with the simultaneous strength, vulnerability and sensuality of the male figure. The seated man, turned away from us into shadow in Man Indoors inhabits a real space, psychological as much as physical. In a series of prints, Jack's Back, the figure looks as if it is flayed to expose the musculature. When Farrell tries to push the works towards a more finished form she runs into trouble, but it's a promising show.
As Anne Crookshank notes in the catalogue, part of the appeal of Martin Mooney's paintings at the Solomon Gallery is that they momentarily persuade us that we are in a calm, untroubled world. He makes subdued, formalised studies of still-life, Moroccan scenes and Irish landscape. The ochre buildings in the Moroccan work have the abstraction of architectural models, with light playing on geometric shapes. The Irish work is particularly good, and includes atmospherically accurate tonal accounts of Strangford Lough and the lake at Clandeboye, made with some audacious stylistic flourishes.
Holly Nixon's Ripe at the Kennedy Gallery pairs straight botanical plant studies with more subjective, personal work. The latter consists of big, brash depictions of fruit and vegetables. They make the most of colour and can be overwhelming. With few exceptions, critical convention favours the purely aesthetic over the functional, but that is changing, and we are already seeing a reassessment of botanical and natural history illustration. Which is perhaps another way of saying that personally I prefer the meticulous precision of the botanical studies, which are of a very high standard.
Sculptor Alexander Sokolov, exhibiting at Origin Gallery, is a stonecarver of terrific facility. His work is pretty much given over to stylised figures and torsos, male and female. A rich vein of subject matter, to be sure, but pursued here to a degree that risks seeming needlessly repetitious. He has a real feeling for form, but also produces work that is formulaic.
It's good that the Arts Council, in a show curated by Helen Mason, the recipient of the 1997 curator's bursary, is exhibiting a number of works by contemporary artists from its collection, and by artists who are represented in its collection - if you follow. At first glance it seemed to be arranged so that a work from the collection was matched by an uncollected work by the same artist, but, confusingly, several of the baker's dozen exhibitors are represented by just one work. There's another complication. Rather than gather them all together in one place they are, perversely, distributed over five venues scattered across the city. If you happen to be in one of the venues check out the pieces, but seeing everything in one go amounts to a bit of an endurance test.
In the stairwell at Arthouse there is a very good video installation by Grace Weir, offering us two simultaneous views of a stone falling in a pond, one from above and one from beneath the surface of the water. It's all done with mirrors. Other felicitous placings include Dorothy Cross's Twelve Apostles at the National Gallery, Ciaran Lennon's impassive grey painting there as well, and Finola Jones's array of kitsch dolls and figurines, which effectively colonise one of the side galleries at the Hugh Lane. Mason's selection is interesting and consistent.
Gareth McConnell's work at the Gallery of Photography adopts the harsh, confrontational style of what has been called the new photography. He shows big, close-up colour prints depicting the scars of victims of punishment beatings in Northern Ireland and, separately, the scars of drug users. He documents without moralising, but by recording evidence of these activities at the fringes he does make us confront what we prefer to ignore.
At the same gallery, Patrick McCoy has come up with a meditation on personal identity, constructing a notional family photo album by arbitrarily grouping together various damaged and discarded photographs found on the streets of Belfast. It's a very good idea, albeit one that works best as an album, and rather less well as a group of images on the wall.
Talk To Me at the Hallward Gallery runs until November 12th. John Graham at Green on Red runs until December 5th. Helen Farrell at the Paul Kane Gallery runs until November 21st. Martin Mooney at the Solomon Gallery runs until November 25th. Contemporary Art at the Arts Council, the National Gallery, Arthouse, the Gallery of Photography and the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery runs until November 29th. Patrick McCoy and Gareth McConnell at the Gallery of Photography run until November 24th. Ripe at the Kennedy Gallery runs until November 14th.
