SHE : [ Cliodhna Timoney at Eight Gallery, Dublin, February 2018 ]

SHE believed in Cliodhna Timoney's work at Eight Gallery Dublin. She believed in the press release – a photocopy of a handwritten and drawn original. She believed in the direct, immediate, flat amorphous shapes within amorphous shapes that pushed and pulled and dragged and dripped, brave and free-wheeling, physically marking the second-fix commercial space with Big abandon. She believed in the scuff marks and sweeping brush arcs on the dust-blanketed floor, veiling its commercial future in temporary desert.

SHE listed off a host of male, 20th Century European painters that appeased her need for legitimising art on history's terms rather than on the artist right-in-front-of-her terms. BUT she believed this was on Timoney’s terms; an artist living in a particular moment when artists had lost their muscles to the flab of technology. She would never say this out loud, but it was good, so good, to experience an Irish artist making big gestures in painting and not falling in line with those that would use the excuse, shortfall in resources, as a reason not to try. 

SHE was not privy to why Eight Gallery relocated to this commercial space. She assumed it was for the usual reasons, and it was a case of ventilator over cure. She admired them for trying to keep this venture on the road at a time when most artists sublimate and substitute their ambition to create concrete and real art experiences with a hashtag. She wondered whether Timoney was prepared to show at Dawson street but was then displaced at the last minute to D'Olier Street? She hoped she was; because she believed in her heart this exhibition was born out of necessity, heralding a vital beginning on the brink of yet another breathless ending.

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