selected exhibtions
I, Submerged: Paintings from Cabbage Beach
FITZROVIA GALLERY
Fitzrovia Gallery is pleased to present I, Submerged: Paintings from Cabbage Beach, the debut London solo exhibition from Irish painter Cathy O’Reilly Hayes. I, Submerged: Paintings from Cabbage Beach is a homage to Hayes’ journey inwards, inspired by moments of awe and deep connection while floating in the ocean. In this collection of paintings and photographs, water is symbolic of deep investigation into her psyche, it acts as a catalyst to dissolve the constructed self and ultimately represents the freedom in stillness and letting go.
In Response
TURPS Correspondence course 20/21.
Artists are the orators of human life. Artists digest, investigate, ponder, contextualise, deconstruct, question and rationalise the experiences of human beings and the world in which they exist. This exhibition presents work by artists who are carrying out this role in two ways; that of introspection versus that of extrospection. Remarkably, this creates a reflection of the fundamental ethos on which the TURPS Correspondence course is built, where each artist presents their work outwards to their mentor and thereupon absorbs the feedback back into the development of their painting practice.
The Burning Roof
GIBBONS & NICHOLAS GALLERY
The Burning Roof is an online exhibition bringing together three artists, Cathy Hayes, Mary De Vincentis and Ursula Burke. From different backdrops and on divergent trajectories, these artists converge under the wordage of WB Yeats’ Sonnet ‘Lena and the Swan.’ Inadvertently, their work, practices and motivations interlink through themes of mythology, mysticism, historical classical and baroque reference, lived experience, emotion and societal politics.
Misconception
NEW ORIGIN GALLERY
The exhibition is a visceral examination of the impact of the Virgin myth on contemporary female identity by artist, Cathy Hayes. The show’s immaculate conception occurred during a life drawing session, when the artist first noted the situations resemblance to the Annunciation: the vulnerable nakedness and silent endurance of the female figure.
A series of works have thus emerged which explore the virgin/whore binary in the representation of women – an opposition which persists in our cultural mentality today, perpetuating the idolatry of femininity by its adherence to these idealised categories.