About > Statement
Beyond the Horizon after 'A Thunderstorm' by J.A. O'Connor, woodland camouflage and plastic bottles vector, 2017, watercolour on paper, 49 x 66 cm
Iremonger's work uses a multidisciplinary approach, of found, created and adapted images. Disciplines include painting, drawing, digital media and neon. Based in Co. Cork, Ireland, her early work is embedded in the romantic and modernist traditions, with epic implications, see Paintings 1990-97. Later and recent work investigates the separation between humans and nature, and explores romanticisms attempt to address this.
2014-19 has seen a return to painting through the development of a collaborative project Horizons with poet Derek Mahon. The project involves a completed prose piece, which has been published as part of the collection 'Olympia and the Internet' with The Gallery Press 2017. The visual work has been developed in three parts: the first Distant Horizon involves work based on the entrance or mouth to Cork Harbour and the abstract works of Piet Mondrian. The second part Submerged Horizon is a reflection on the idea of 'lost islands' in this case Skellig Michael, the loss here is of the islands identity to corporate, popular and tourist culture, using nature camouflages and Star Wars imagery to achieve this. Part three Beyond the Horizon (see above) looks at the idea of creating fantasy landscapes based on the works of Irish nineteenth century painter James Arthur O'Connor, buried underneath nature camouflages and plastic waste vectors.
This work investigates the separation between humans and nature, and explores romanticisms attempt to address this issue. To this end, the approach has been to explore an immersive agenda through landscape painting, while placing the agency of subject matter and personal artistic signature in the background, so that visual landscape signifiers are hidden in a forest of camouflage.
Solipsism Series was exhibited at the Macroom Town Hall, Co. Cork 2013 and the Royal Hibernian Gallery, Dublin 2014, this series of works consists of digitally manipulated images of nineteenth century maritime paintings of Cork harbour printed and mounted on dibond. By removing the subject matter of the paintings, in this case the ships, offers the opportunity for a different interpretation of the paintings and collapses the subject/object duality of these kinds of the paintings.
The Travels of Eugen von Guérard shown at allerArt Austria 2011 and Sirius Arts Centre Co. Cork 2012, looked at how the work of nineteenth century Austrian artist Eugen von Guérard, who exported a specific European colonial vision of landscape to Australia, this work again explores the idea of the artwork as an ephemeral object imbued with meaning, this time colonial, and shows how our ideas about nature are a construct of specific cultural perspectives. Using found objects, photography, text and a painted mural to confound fiction and fact, past and present, exploring the nature of our understanding of images of landscape.
In the exhibition I thought I dreamed of you 2009-10 at the West Cork Arts Centre, a painted mural was included in the exhibition space and documentation of a fake painted mural, of the same image installed upside-down in the same site was also included. This documentation took the form of drawing on a photograph of the exhibition space, suggesting a slippage and dislocation of space and time, of fact and fiction.
Different materials such as video, neon, drawn and painted murals, printed media, and photographs have helped her explore the relationship between perception and meaning. The Hunting Box Party 2005-2011 was shown at the Crawford Art Gallery, Cork in 2005, the Knoll Gallery, Vienna, Austria 2010, the Knoll Gallery, Budapest, Hungary 2011 and The Armory Gallery, Sydney Olympic Stadium, Australia 2011. Using video, badges and greeting cards to explore the idea of the artwork as an ephemeral object of imbued meaning. While Landscape Unions used politics as a context within which to make artwork. Both these works are critical of an anthropocentric view of nature.
Iremonger's early work in the 1990's focused on depicting painted representations of space and light, using walls, windows and doorways to create space within the picture plane and was interested in how the illusion of space can be created on and beyond a flat surface through layers of luminous dark oil colours on canvas and board, and acrylic on paper.
The conceptualization of her practice since 1998 changed the way she approached her central concern at the time the quandary of painting with particular interest in how context shapes its meaning.
Since then Iremonger has used a multidisciplinary approach to create installations and exhibitions, exploring the way site affects the meaning of an artwork. For example in her exhibition The Top Half of the Hero at the Triskel Arts Centre, Cork in 2002, images of the gallery space and the hidden office spaces were reproduced as part of the exhibition in the gallery in the form of drawn murals, this created a dislocation of space and meaning, creating a heightened awareness of the site.
Sarah Iremonger June 2019
To view recent work and for sales contact Oliver Sears Gallery / +353 1 6449459 / 33 Fitzwilliam St Upper, Dublin 2, Ireland