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List to artist Patricia Hurl, for a keynote discussion on her major retrospective exhibition at IMMA. The artist is joined in conversation with art historian, writer, and curator Catherine Marshall, together they reflect on the significance of Hurl’s longstanding, socially inclusive art practice and the context for some of the most challenging feminist artworks made by Hurl from the 1980s to today.
Track Details:
Exhibition Preview Talk | Irish Gothic with Patricia Hurl & Catherine Marshall | February 9th 2023, Lecture Room, IMMA.
Exhibition Details:
IMMA is delighted to present this major retrospective by Patricia Hurl, one of Ireland’s most accomplished artists. Hurl’s work is by its nature political, and traverses the disciplines of painting, multi-media and collaborative art practice. Since the 1970s, she has created work that deals with loss, pain, frustration and loneliness.
The exhibition features over 70 works, mainly drawn from early paintings in which she exposed and upended our standard images of Irish suburban domesticity and bliss. Early works such as Ennui (1985) and Company Wife (1986) demonstrate Hurl’s characteristic use of highly expressionistic and layered brushstrokes that tend to blur distinctions between the figurative and abstraction. This stylistic blend intensifies the visceral qualities and emotion in Hurl’s work painted in spontaneous and instinctive bursts. Her immersive works make use of distinctive palettes that map stages of the artist’s life and mirror preoccupations in her work, such as the muted tones of a marital breakup in (add title figures attached at the feet) or the vivid red responses to media coverage documenting war and violence in works such as Hurl’s ongoing Warrior Series. The exhibition includes a selection of the many sketchbooks and diaries that have always been central to Hurl’s practice and an integral part of her thought process.
Speaker Details:
Originally from Dublin and a former member of Temple Bar Galleries and Studios, Dublin, Patricia Hurl often works in collaboration with artist Therry Rudin. Hurl was a lecturer in Fine Art Painting at the Dublin Institute of Technology and studied at the National College of Art and Design,1975 and at Dun Laoghaire School of Art and Design,1984. Hurl currently runs the Damer Gallery in Co Tipperary along with Therry Rudin. In 1984 she won the Norah Mc Guinness award for painting.
Hurl’s work was recently included in The Narrow Gate of the Here and Now: IMMA 30 Years of the Global Contemporary: Queer Embodiment; IMMA, Dublin 2021 – 2022; Elliptical Affinities: Irish Women Artists and the Politics of the Body, 1984 to the present, Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda, Co Louth and Limerick City Art Gallery, 2019 – 2020. Hurl has exhibited in selected group and solo shows and has represented Ireland in symposiums in Atlanta USA, Caversham, S.A. and Zaragossa, Spain. She was a contributor to The Great Book of Ireland. Her work is included in the recent publication Art and Architecture of Ireland Volume V: Twentieth Century, Royal Irish Academy, 2015. Hurl’s work is represented in private and public collections including IMMA; The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon; The Highlanes Gallery and the Collection of University of Limerick.
Catherine Marshall,
Catherine Marshall is a curator and art historian. She lectured in art history at Trinity College Dublin, the National College of Art and Design and University College Dublin. In 2019 she was recipient of the first honorary doctorate in the History of Art from University College Dublin. As founding head of collections at the Irish Museum of Modern Art she curated exhibitions of Outsider art from the Musgrave Kinley Collection, exhibitions of Irish art in China, USA and the UK and throughout Ireland with the IMMA National Programme. She co-edited Art and architecture of Ireland, Vol. V, Twentieth Century (2014) and is an active member of Na Cailleacha (NaCailleacha.weebly.com).