In The Gallery, 21 Arran Street East, Dublin 7, D07YY97

Preview: 07 March 6pm - 8pm

Exhibition Run: 08 march - 21 March

Gallery Opening Hours: Monday - Friday 10am - 5pm, Saturday 12pm - 5pm

Mudlarking marks Alison Pilkington’s first exhibition in The Gallery at The Complex. Alison has been a studio artist at The Complex since 2017. During this time I have regularly walked past her paintings, moved them around, peeped at them through a studio window, and discussed them with Alison during unannounced studio visits. One thing that has continually drawn me to her paintings is the environment she depicts in them. One that belongs to a particular inner geography, a subconscious landmass – rugged barren mountainous terrain with occasional bodies of water. This environment is cohesive across her paintings, disclosing Alison’s proximity to it — a landscape frequently visited by the artist. This landscape contains characters, and often those characters contain the landscape. These surreal figures recur in Alison's work, subtly shifting in color and form. They depict imagined ethnicities, sometimes crossing paths, with intentions, beliefs, and dreams of their own. They wander infinitely in search of things. Maybe the same thing. We are not quite sure – Mark O’Gorman.

Mudlark: A person who scavenges for usable debris in the mud of a river or harbour – New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary of Historical Principles (1993).

For Mudlarkers, each day a tidal river grants a glimpse of its contents. Objects revealed by the river tell a story of the city and its lived experience. The living and the dead brush up against each other with the ebb and flow of the tide. Past and present overlap as objects emerge – tiny lost and discarded things that can tell the greatest of stories.

I liken mudlarking to painting. Mudlarkers view the rivers as a place to disconnect, absorbing themselves in the act of searching along the shores. The studio is a place where I disconnect from life and absorb myself in the process of painting. Like the activity of mudlarking, I scavenge through paint on the canvas, sometimes scrubbing and destroying with the hope of revealing something. Over time strange narratives emerge from past experience and memory. The artist Martin Kippenberger said ‘Embrace your past...that’s where you are going to find images, material’. My memories are like tributaries that flow into a river. Like a river, memories wind in loops and diversions. Memories, much like a river’s source, can be located in unexpected places. I feel like I am searching the shores of a river when I am painting – like a mudlarker seeking gems, hoping to find treasures in the mud – Alison Pilkington

The Complex has commissioned Alison Pilkington to produce an edition of 50 fine art prints at Graphic Studio, Dublin. The prints will be available for purchase during the exhibition. The show will also feature a new series of paintings alongside a limited collection of handmade concertina books by the artist.

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Alison Pilkington completed a practice led PhD in painting at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin (2015). She was awarded a British Institution Award for painting at the Royal Academy Summer Show, London (2012). Pilkington has been selected for the Marmite Painting Prize, London (2012 & 2016). She was shortlisted for the Kurt Beers 100 Painters of Tomorrow publication (2013), and won 3rd prize at the Artslant International Jurors Award (2013).

Recent exhibitions include XXX Whatever at New York Crit Club, New York (2022); Somewhere the Zebra is Dancing at Schonfeld Gallery, Brussels (2021); I Build My Own Island (solo) at Model Arts & Niland Gallery, Sligo (2021); Dubliners at the International Painting Biennale, Zagreb (2021) Penumbra at FE McWilliam Gallery, Banbridge, Northern Ireland (2020); To Paint the Gloom Itself at Terrace Gallery, London (2020); Will We Remember Volcanoes at Westminster Art Library, London (2020); and Strangelands at Collyer Bristow Gallery, London (2020). Her work was also included in Contemporary British Painting, a touring exhibition across four museums in China (2017–2018), and How We Roam at The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon, and Ashford Gallery, RHA, Dublin (2018). Pilkington lives and works in Dublin, Ireland.

Proudly supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and Dublin City Council.

Image credit: Alison Pilkington, ‘A Dream of Mammy’, 150 x 120 cm, 2024.