Mary Fitzgerald (artist)

Mary FitzGerald (born 1956) 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,[1] 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,[2] L'Imaginaire Irlandais and the XVIII Bienal de Sao Paulo.[3] Her 2009 show, Afterlife, which was held at the Fenton Gallery,[4] Cork, was reviewed in The Irish Times by Aidan Dunne on 27 May 2009.[5] The exhibit was accompanied by the publication of a limited edition, large format book by the same name published by Four Courts Press.[6] It presented five of her recent works along with an essay by Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith.[7] (Mac Giolla Léith is an art critic and lecturer and served on the 2005 Turner Prize jury[8] along with Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate[9]). 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[10] 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).[11] 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 [1] (Lament, in Irish) has a rueful humor to it — a pleading to get through the door.

She was elected a member of Aosdána[12] (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.

Contents

Solo exhibitions

Group exhibitions

Awards

Commissions

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.

References

  1. ^ http://www.ncad.ie
  2. ^ http://www.modernart.ie/en/page_139218.htm
  3. ^ http://www.jstor.org/pss/20491763
  4. ^ http://www.artireland.net/sys-tmpl/door/
  5. ^ Dunne, Aidan (27 May 2009), "Of loss and the fragility of life", The Irish Times, http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2009/0527/1224247495934.html, retrieved 26 March 2010 
  6. ^ http://www.fourcourtspress.ie/product.php?intProductID=913
  7. ^ http://www.ucd.ie/research/people/irishcelstirishflling/drcaoimhinmacgiollaleith/
  8. ^ http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/turnerprize/history/yearbyyear.shtm
  9. ^ http://www.tate.org.uk
  10. ^ Afterlife, Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, Four Courts Press,
  11. ^ Works 6: Mary FitzGerald (Gandon Editions, Dublin, 1991, pp17-25)
  12. ^ http://aosdana.artscouncil.ie/Members/Visual-Arts/Fitzgerald.aspx?Cnuas=1
  13. ^ http://www.artireland.net
  14. ^ http://www.greenonredgallery.com/
  15. ^ www.artin2000.com
  16. ^ www.crawfordartgallery.ie
  17. ^ http://www.artscouncil-ni.org/
  18. ^ http://opera.siteaccept.com/ArchivedProduction.aspx?year=2002

External links