Art

Danny McCarthy (right) is one of Ireland's leading performance artists but, appropriately, he is only indirectly present in The Road To Silence, his Triskel Gallery exhibition which is about absence. In fact, the show is a heartfelt tribute to his friend, the late Sean Dunne. The book, drawings, paintings and ambient sound installation in Triskel all relate to their subject in fact or in spirit and embody McCarthy's own quirky, unorthodox aesthetic. He used earth and grass stems from the poet's grave to create a series of paintings and calligraphic drawings, made watercolours with herbal tea bags and used the morning dew at Mount Mellary, a favourite retreat of Dunne's, to oxidise a steel plate as a means of making prints. As Dunne once said of him: "His work answers nothing. Instead, like all art and writing of any worth, it enriches our questions."