Oisín Byrne: Not Marble

9 Apr-31 May 2025

Overview

The title of Oisín Byrne’s second solo exhibition with the gallery is from a poem by Edwin Morgan, Not Marble: A Reconstruction. This is a short and incisive ode to love that favours the ordinary, the domestic and the ephemeral over any monumental display of grandeur. Here, Byrne presents a group of paintings of friends and collaborators – a reconstruction, of sorts, of people he likes to spend time with.

The works are a result of a process of exchange with the sitters – some bring a book and some chat to Byrne as he experiments with colour and line to register a dialogue or presence. This serves to create a personal depiction rather than a direct likeness – assembling his thoughts and observations around a community.

These paintings are extra-sensory portraits – illuminations of those who inspire Byrne. Some feature spare lines floating on the surface of the wooden panel, and some are rendered with saturated colour. The ongoing series is as much about Byrne as it is about the sitters, a visual recording of absorbing moments of exchange.

Many of the sitters are other artists, writers and makers. A companion publication brings together texts by 6 of these sitters: Juno Claffey Hegarty, Vaari Claffey, Adam Gibbons, Joseph Noonan-Ganley, Frank Wasser and Eva Wilson. Painted from life at the artists studio - the works act as a homage to the collective and intimate space of making art.

Oisín Byrne (b.1983, Dublin) is an Irish artist, writer and film-maker based in London. Byrne’s work has been exhibited internationally in institutions including Salzburger Kunstverein, Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, Kunstinstituut Melly, The Irish Museum of Modern Art, EVA International, Princeton University and Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute, Scotland. His writing has been published in books by Pilot Press, MA Bibliotheque, Eros Press and Bookworks.