Allotment is a series of paintings made over a six-month period from November 2020 to April 2021. The large pieces are oil paint on wooden panels on a ground of handmade chalk gesso, and the smaller pieces are pencil drawings on pigmented chalk gesso. Taking images from quick pencil drawings and interpretations of leaf motifs throughout art history, these works use the motif as a means of showcasing the natural properties of the colour and surface. By building up a surface in several translucent layers of material, the image is embedded into the piece, including the cracks in the surface and the faint grain of the wood beneath.
Separated into four panels, the paintings are built in two foldable units connected by hinges, so that the visible form and rendered image can be collapsed, folded up and reassembled depending on where it is or how we want to look at it. In this fully assembled moment, the strong pigments and visible hardware offset the weighty, aged surface to create something bright and even indulgent to be looked at.
Eve O’Callaghan graduated from NCAD Painting department in 2017 and will begin an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art in 2021. She won the Adams award at the 2018 RHA Annual Exhibition, and has been shortlisted for several others awards, including the Hennessy Craig Scholarship (2019), and the RDS Visual Art Awards (2017). She was the 2019 recipient of the Temple Bar Gallery and Studios Recent Graduate Residency, during which these paintings were completed. Her work has previously been exhibited at Pallas Projects, Dublin (2019), Draoicht Dublin (2018) and the RHA Gallery (2018, 2019), and is currently on view in Second Summer group show at The Dock, Carrick-On-Shannon.
For enquiries, please contact Eve directly at ocallaghan.eve@gmail.com
Other work is available to view via catalogue by request, or online at www.eveocallaghan.com
