Mary Fitzgerald (artist)
Encyclopedia
Mary FitzGerald is an Irish
artist who lives and works in Dublin and County Waterford
. After graduating from the National College of Art and Design
, Dublin in 1977, she moved to Japan
where she lived and exhibited between 1979 and 1981. FitzGerald has held numerous solo exhibitions in Ireland, Europe and the United States and has participated in group exhibitions worldwide. She has represented Ireland at ROSC, L'Imaginaire Irlandais and the XVIII Bienal de Sao Paulo. Her 2009 show, Afterlife, which was held at the Fenton Gallery, Cork, was reviewed in The Irish Times
by Aidan Dunne
on 27 May 2009. The exhibit was accompanied by the publication of a limited edition, large format book by the same name published by Four Courts Press. It presented five of her recent works along with an essay by Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith. (Mac Giolla Léith is an art critic and lecturer and served on the 2005 Turner Prize jury along with Nicholas Serota
, director of the Tate
). It was her first show since 1995 and was a return to a career interrupted by a car accident in the mid-1980s that forced a creative hiatus. She works out her studio in Dublin as well as her home in Waterford and has also resumed her travels, recently spending time in Africa, the Antarctic, South America and Asia (she was in Sri Lanka when the tsunami hit in 2004 - the sense of violence, catastrophe and mortality is often reflected in her work).
FitzGerald's recent work has been characterized as an attempt to convey vulnerability through images which are impermanent, transient and almost invisible (she often utilizes smoke, grease and water condensation encased in plexiglass). Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, her work was largely spare and austere and she appeared to prefer a limited palette. She often worked with a variety of media including glass, metal, fabric and paper and has designed a number of tapestries and carpets as well as costume designs for opera. An understated approach is a continuing theme in her work. The years she spent in Japan clearly influenced her work and it sometimes featured quasi-calligraphic marks characteristic of Asian art. She also works with materials that have a certain fragility and has been quoted as saying that as all experience is qualified by the inevitability of the end, most art, and hers in particular, has a fundamental concern with death (in conversation with Felicity Woolf). FitzGerald's subjects could be described as grim, focusing as they do on pain, loss, vulnerability to disaster, the transience and fragility of life, but her work does not depress. There is an elegant austerity and a calm stillness to it. Work can be a way of coming to terms with difficult things and making something meaningful from what might otherwise overwhelm and destroy. A 2009 video installation, Caoineadh http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgJA7-ZPvU8 (Lament, in Irish) has a rueful humor to it — a pleading to get through the door.
She was elected a member of Aosdána
(an organisation established by the Irish Government to honor those who have made an outstanding contribution to the Arts in Ireland, limited to 250 living members) in 1990.
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'The process of making art is my way of coming to terms with experiences which are difficult to accept or to fully comprehend. As all experience is qualified by the inevitability of the end, most art, and certainly mine, has a fundamental concern with death.
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
artist who lives and works in Dublin and County Waterford
County Waterford
*Abbeyside, Affane, Aglish, Annestown, An Rinn, Ardmore*Ballinacourty, Ballinameela, Ballinamult, Ballinroad, Ballybeg, Ballybricken, Ballyduff Lower, Ballyduff Upper, Ballydurn, Ballygunner, Ballylaneen, Ballymacarbry, Ballymacart, Ballynaneashagh, Ballysaggart, Ballytruckle, Bilberry, Bunmahon,...
. After graduating from the National College of Art and Design
National College of Art and Design
The National College of Art and Design is a national art and design school in Dublin, Ireland.-History:Situated on Thomas Street, the NCAD started as a private drawing school and has become a national institution educating over 1,500 day and evening students as artists, designers and art educators...
, Dublin in 1977, she moved to Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
where she lived and exhibited between 1979 and 1981. FitzGerald has held numerous solo exhibitions in Ireland, Europe and the United States and has participated in group exhibitions worldwide. She has represented Ireland at ROSC, L'Imaginaire Irlandais and the XVIII Bienal de Sao Paulo. Her 2009 show, Afterlife, which was held at the Fenton Gallery, Cork, was reviewed in The Irish Times
The Irish Times
The Irish Times is an Irish daily broadsheet newspaper launched on 29 March 1859. The editor is Kevin O'Sullivan who succeeded Geraldine Kennedy in 2011; the deputy editor is Paul O'Neill. The Irish Times is considered to be Ireland's newspaper of record, and is published every day except Sundays...
by Aidan Dunne
Aidan Dunne
A graduate of the National College of Art and Design, Aidan Dunne was art critic of In Dublin magazine, Sunday Press and the Sunday Tribune. Currently visual arts critic of The Irish Times, Dunne has written extensively on Irish art, with essays on Michael Mulcahy, Patrick Scott, Hughie O'Donoghue,...
on 27 May 2009. The exhibit was accompanied by the publication of a limited edition, large format book by the same name published by Four Courts Press. It presented five of her recent works along with an essay by Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith. (Mac Giolla Léith is an art critic and lecturer and served on the 2005 Turner Prize jury along with Nicholas Serota
Nicholas Serota
Sir Nicholas Andrew Serota is a British art curator. Serota was director of the Whitechapel Gallery, London, and The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, before becoming director of the Tate, the United Kingdom's national gallery of modern and British art in 1988. He was awarded a knighthood in 1999. He...
, director of the Tate
Tate
-Places:*Tate, Georgia, a town in the United States*Tate County, Mississippi, a county in the United States*Táté, the Hungarian name for Totoi village, Sântimbru Commune, Alba County, Romania*Tate, Filipino word for States...
). It was her first show since 1995 and was a return to a career interrupted by a car accident in the mid-1980s that forced a creative hiatus. She works out her studio in Dublin as well as her home in Waterford and has also resumed her travels, recently spending time in Africa, the Antarctic, South America and Asia (she was in Sri Lanka when the tsunami hit in 2004 - the sense of violence, catastrophe and mortality is often reflected in her work).
FitzGerald's recent work has been characterized as an attempt to convey vulnerability through images which are impermanent, transient and almost invisible (she often utilizes smoke, grease and water condensation encased in plexiglass). Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, her work was largely spare and austere and she appeared to prefer a limited palette. She often worked with a variety of media including glass, metal, fabric and paper and has designed a number of tapestries and carpets as well as costume designs for opera. An understated approach is a continuing theme in her work. The years she spent in Japan clearly influenced her work and it sometimes featured quasi-calligraphic marks characteristic of Asian art. She also works with materials that have a certain fragility and has been quoted as saying that as all experience is qualified by the inevitability of the end, most art, and hers in particular, has a fundamental concern with death (in conversation with Felicity Woolf). FitzGerald's subjects could be described as grim, focusing as they do on pain, loss, vulnerability to disaster, the transience and fragility of life, but her work does not depress. There is an elegant austerity and a calm stillness to it. Work can be a way of coming to terms with difficult things and making something meaningful from what might otherwise overwhelm and destroy. A 2009 video installation, Caoineadh http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgJA7-ZPvU8 (Lament, in Irish) has a rueful humor to it — a pleading to get through the door.
She was elected a member of Aosdána
Aosdána
Aosdána is an Irish association of Artists. It was created in 1981 on the initiative of a group of writers and with support from the Arts Council of Ireland. Membership, which is by invitation from current members, is limited to 250 individuals; before 2005 it was limited to 200...
(an organisation established by the Irish Government to honor those who have made an outstanding contribution to the Arts in Ireland, limited to 250 living members) in 1990.
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Solo exhibitions
- 2009 Afterlife, Fenton Gallery, Cork
- 1995 Paintings, Rhok Gallery, Brussels
- 1994 Horizon, Green on Red Gallery, Dublin
- 1993 Continuum, Jain Marunouchi Gallery, New York
- 1992 Orientation, Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork
- 1991 Counter / Act, Oliver Dowing Gallery, Dublin
- 1989 New Works, Riverrun Gallery, Limerick & Boole Library, University College, Cork
- 1988 Image-Afterimage, Arts Council Gallery, Belfast; Paintings, Oliver Dowling Gallery, Dublin
- 1986 The Drawing Room, Oliver Dowling Gallery, Dublin
- 1985 Painting, AIB, Brussels
- 1984 Paintings, Oliver Dowling Gallery, Dublin
- 1982 Painting — Drawing, Oliver Dowling Gallery, Dublin
Group exhibitions
- 2009 Terror and the Sublime, Crawford Gallery, Cork http://www.crawfordartgallery.ie/.
- 2008 10,000 to 50, http://www.modernart.ie Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Representing Art in Ireland, [Fenton Gallery, Cork].
- 2002 No Object, No Subject, No Matter...Abstraction in the IMMA Collection, http://www.modernart.ie Irish Museum of Modern Art.
- 2000 Millennium Exhibition, RHA Gallagher Gallery[www.royalhibernianacademy.ie], Dublin, and Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast.
- 1999 Primal Means, Belltable Arts Centre, Limerick and West Cork Arts Centre Paperworks; Art of the State, National Photographic Archive, Dublin and tour.
- 1997 Re-Dressing Cathleen http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/artmuseum/exhibitions/archive/redress.html, McMullen Museum, Boston.
- 1996 L'Imaginaire Irlandais, Le Monde de l'Art, Paris
- 1993 Gateway to Art, Dublin Airport Arts Festival, Dublin; Eurothreshold, Millstreet and Macroom, Cork; European Encounters, Centrum 'tElzenveld, Antwerp, Belgium (representing Ireland); Claremorris Open Art Exhibition Prizewinners Exhibition, Mayo and Harmony Hill Arts Centre, Lisburn
- 1992 Irish Abstraction, B4A Gallery and South Bank Gallery, New York; Summer Exhibition, Claremorris Gallery, Mayo; Projecto America, Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil; Monoprint Exhibition 1992, Graphic Studio Gallery, Dublin; Summer Exhibition, Oliver Dowling Gallery, Dublin; Southern Artists, Cork Arts Society Gallery, Cork; Balance/Imbalance, Rubicon Gallery http://www.rubicongallery.ie, Dublin
- 1991 A New Tradition — Irish Art of the Eighties, http://www.douglashydegallery.com/ The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin
- 1990 Images from Ireland — Modern Irish Painting, Commission of the European Communities, Albert Borschette Conference Centre, Brussels, Belgium; Gateway to Art; Dublin Airport 20th Anniversary Arts Festival, Dublin; Irish Art — The European Dimension, The Gallagher Gallery, Dublin; Contemporary Artists from Ireland, Austin Desmond Fine Art, London
- 1989-1990 EVA Prizewinners Exhibition touring City Gallery, Limerick, Arts Council Gallery, Belfast, and The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Sligo Art Gallery, Sligo, Crawford Municipal Art Gallery http://www.crawfordartgallery.ie/, Cork and the Butler Gallery, Kilkenny
- 1989 Europese Raaklignen, The Flemish Museum, Gent, Belgium (representing Ireland); National Self Portrait Collection, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin; Claremorris Open Art Exhibition, Mayo, Sligo Arts Festival, Sligo, Oireachtas Exhibition, Gallagher Gallery, Dublin
- 1988 Gateway to Art, Dublin Airport Arts Festival, Dublin; ROSC, Guinness Hop Store and The Royal Hospital, Dublin; Rajz/Drawing; Pesci Gallery, Hungary; Flags Along the Liffey, Irish Exhibition of Living Art, Dublin; Personal Choice, Butler Gallery, Kilkenny; EVAhttp://www.eva.ie/ (Parts 1 & 2), City Gallery, Limerick; Dublin Millenium Billboard Exhibition, Douglas Hyde GalleryDouglas Hyde GalleryThe Douglas Hyde Gallery is a publicly-funded contemporary art gallery situated within the historical setting of Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.When the Gallery opened in 1978, it was for a number of years Ireland's only public gallery of contemporary art...
, Dublin; Claremorris Open Art Exhibition, Mayo. - 1987 Irish Exhibition of Living Art, Dublin; SADE, Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork; Women Artists in Ireland from the Eighteenth Century to the Present Day: Contemporary Section, Douglas Hyde Gallery; Expression '87, Dun Laoghaire Arts Week, Thirty Days — Art September, Arts Council Collection, The Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, Dublin; W.A.A.G., Guinness Hop Store, Dublin; The Guinness Peat Aviation Collection, City Gallery, Limerick; The Silent Image, Boole Library, University College, Cork.
- 1986-1988 Celtic Vision, Exhibition touring Spain, Britain, France, Ireland and Canada.
- 1985 Personal Choice, Butler Gallery, Kilkenny; Lawrence Ross Gallery, Los Angeles, Artists of the Oliver Dowling Gallery at The Chantry, Bunclody, Wexford; The Decade Show, Guinness Hop Store, Dublin.
- 1985-1987 Four Artists from Ireland, exhibition touring Ireland (Belfast, Cork, Galway, Limerick, Kilkenny, Waterford, Derry and Dublin); Brazil, (Sao Paulo, Rio de Janiero, Porte Allegre) and Argentina (Buenos Aires).
- 1985 Personal Choice, Butler Gallery, Kilkenny; Dublin/Edinburgh Exhibition, Edinburgh Festival; 18th Bienal de Sao Paulo, Brazil (representing Ireland); Cross Currents, Sligo Art Gallery, Sligo; Irish Exhibition of Living Art, Dublin.
- 1984 Studies, Oliver Dowling Gallery, Dublin; Artists of the Oliver Dowling Gallery at the Belltable Arts Centre, Limerick
- 1983 Looking forward..., Oliver Dowling Gallery, Dublin; Claremorris Open Art Exhibition, Mayo; Guinness Peat Aviation Awards Exhibition for Emerging Artists, Dublin and Shannon; King's and King's, Belltable Arts Centre, Limerick.
- 1982 SADE, Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork http://www.crawfordartgallery.ie/; Flags Along the Liffey, Oasis Outdoor Sculpture Exhibition, Dublin; EVAhttp://www.eva.ie/, Municipal Art Gallery, Limerick.
- 1981 Maki Gallery, Tokyo
Awards
- 2006 Ballinglen Foundation Fellowship http://www.ballinglenartsfoundation.org/
- 1987 Claremorris Open Art Exhibition Award http://www.coearts.org/
- 1986 Irish Exhibition of Living Art, Invited Artists Bursary
- 1986 Department of Foreign Affairs / Council Travel Bursary; Patron's Award, EVA http://www.eva.ie/, Limerick
- 1985 Arts Council of Ireland http://www.artscouncil.ie/en/homepage.aspx Visual Arts Bursary; Irish Exhibition of Living Art, Banner commission
- 1983 Arts Council of Ireland Visual Arts Bursary; G. P. A. Award for Emerging Artists
- 1979 Monbusho Japanese Government Research Scholarship Monbukagakusho ScholarshipMonbukagakusho Scholarshipis a prestigious scholarship offered by the Monbu-kagaku-shō.To date, some 65,000 students from approximately 160 countries and regions around the world have studied in Japan under the Japanese Government Scholarship program established in 1954...
Commissions
- 2001 Well Spring, two inter-related tapestries for the headquarters of Fingal County Council.
- 2000 Design for three inter-related tapestries for the Council chamber of Sligo Corporation; Ocean, Artwork in cut stone and handmade carpet for Leinster House.
- 1998 Confluence, public artwork commissioned by Waterford Corporation for Waterford City.
- 1997 Design for a carpet for Portman Square House, London.
- 1995 Design for a tapestry for Milltown Golf Club, Dublin.
- 1994 O'Reilly Hall, University College, Dublin Painting; Design for a tapestry for the Council of Chamber, South County Dublin County Council; Dublin Civic Offices, Painting.
- 1992 Design for a series of tapestries for Allied Irish Bank, International Centre, Irish Financial Services Centre, Dublin. Aer Rianta, Dublin International Airport, Painting. Design for a tapestry for the William Rowan Hamilton Building, Trinity College, Dublin. Lifetime Assurance Company Ltd., Dublin, Painting.
- 1991 Design for a handmade stair carpet for the Office of the Department of the Taoiseach, Dublin. Algemene Bank Nederland, Dublin, Painting. The Great Book of Ireland, The Clashganna Mills Trust. Design for a handmade carpet for the Bank of Ireland, La Touche House, Irish Financial Services Centre, Dublin.
- 1990 Set and costume design for the Opera Theatre Company's production of Benjamin Britten's The Rape of Lucretia.
- 1989 A. & L. Goodbody, Dublin, Installation. University College, Dublin, Engineering Faculty Building, Installation.
Collections
- The Irish Museum of Modern Art http://www.imma.ie/en/page_210696.htm, Dublin.
- An Chomhairle Ealaion/The Arts Council http://www.artscouncil.ie/en/homepage.aspx
- The Arts Council of Northern Ireland http://www.artscouncil-ni.org
- Allied Irish Bank plc., New York, Brussels, Dublin and London http://www.aibgroup.com/servlet/Satellite?c=CSRContent_C&cid=1177399277610&pagename=CSRPortal/csr_main
- Allied Irish Investment Bank, Dublin
- The Rehabilitation Institute, Dublin
- Contemporary Irish Art Society http://www.contemporaryirishartsociety.com/
- Guinness Peat Aviation, Shannon
- The Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland
- The Office of Public Works http://www.opw.ie/en/StateArt/
- The National Self-Portrait Collection, Limerick
- The National Institute of Higher Education, Dublin
- University College, Cork
- The National Collection of Contemporary Drawing, Limerick
- A. & L. Goodbody
- University College, Dublin
- Jordan Grand Prix, London
- KPMG, Stokes Kennedy Crowley, Dublin
- Bank of Ireland plc
- Algemene Bank Nederland, Dublin
- Department of the Taoiseach, Dublin
- Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork http://www.crawfordartgallery.ie/
- Aer Rianta, Dublin
- McCann FitzGerald, Dublin
- Trinity College, Dublin
- Lifetime Assurance Company, Dublin
- Irish Life Assurance plc., Dublin
- St. Patrick's Hospital, Dublin
- Ireland House, New York
- St. James' Hospital, Dublin
- King House, Boyle, Co. Roscommon
- Four Courts Press, Dublin.
- Herbert Park Hotel, Dublin
- Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council
- Sligo Corporation
- Portman Square House, London
- Dublin City Council
- Fingal County Council
- Department of the Taoiseach, Dublin
- Leinster House, Dublin
- National Concert Hall, Dublin
- European University Institute, Florence
- The Worth Library, Dublin.
- Department of Foreign Affairs, Dublin.
- Embassy of Ireland, Lisbon
- Numerous private collections
Quotations
'Art is an expression of thought and one gradually finds a voice which articulates your thoughts and emotions. The finished works embody this process but they also have a physical presence.''The process of making art is my way of coming to terms with experiences which are difficult to accept or to fully comprehend. As all experience is qualified by the inevitability of the end, most art, and certainly mine, has a fundamental concern with death.