Coming Home Late: Jo Baer In the Land of the Giants

24 Aug 2023-21 Jan 2024

Overview

This solo exhibition by the American artist Jo Baer, brings together a series of recent paintings inspired by the artist’s stay in the archaeologically rich countryside of County Louth between 1975 and 1982.

Born in 1929, Baer was one of the key figures of the Minimalist painting movement in New York in the 1960s and early 1970s. During this period, she explored the formal aspects of the medium and developed a visual language of non-objectivity in her black and white hard-edge paintings, culminating in her acclaimed solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1975. That same year, reflecting on Minimalism’s failure to respond to the dramatic events of the 1960s, Baer abandoned the style and left New York to become chatelain of Smarmore Castle in County Louth. Over the next seven years, her practice gradually shifted towards a ‘radical figuration’, also known as ‘image constellations’ that combine figural elements, text, images, and symbols.

The series of six works completed between 2009 and 2013, presented alongside two additional paintings dating to 2020, was fuelled by Baer’s continued research into Irish Neolithic artefacts and myths. They reflect the artist’s long-life interest in history and science and trace the convergences and timelines of thought and memory between the ancient and now.

Artists