Fergus Feehily
Pavilion
Gallery 1
October 9 - November 18, 2009
The Douglas Hyde recently featured this show as part of the From the Archive Project, which was requested by Gráine Stack. She wanted to look back at the exhibition by Fergus Feehily, Pavilion, which took place in 2009. In response, we have created this page compiling extracts of the exhibition catalogue’s visual essay, some images of the installation, and individual images of some of the artworks. We have also linked a review from the time by Maeve Connolly.
This was Fergus Feehily’s first solo exhibition at the Douglas Hyde Gallery. He was also part of our exhibition programme in 2012, when an installation of his work exploring light, darkness and luminosity was presented as part of our The Paradise project. Fergus Feehily was also part of two our group exhibitions Dukkha (2014) and Interlude: Aspects of Irish landscape painting (2011).
—
Fergus Feehily’s unconventional ‘paintings’ (sometimes the work has little to do with applying paint to a support) are modest and restrained. Invariably elegant, they are often based on a found object or image that is transformed by a sequence of improvisational moves or procedures.
At the heart of this new collection of works is a curious relationship between reticence and revelation: in many of the paintings the surfaces are partly obscured by sheets of plywood, both raw and coloured. Typically, their tone is reflective and withdrawn; Feehily never uses strength or bravura to communicate with the viewer. His work is nonetheless emotionally resonant; it may look like a kind of formalism, but it isn’t.
Text by John Hutchinson