Art exhibitions: highlights for December 2004

Irish artist Rachel Joynt has designed a series of beautiful illuminated glass cobbles that will adorn the riverside pathways from the Custom House all to the Point in Dublin’s Docklands. Designed as a series of stepping-stones, the first cobbles are being installed now, with installation of all 900-plus cobbles to be completed by mid-December.

Elsewhere, there is a decidedly contemporary air to this year’s Christmas Exhibition at Jorgensen Fine Art. Brian King’s stainless steel wall-sculpture To-Mera 14 is as stylishly sophisticated today as it was at its inception in 1914. Works by Charles Tyrell, Steve Barraclough and Mary Fitzgerald evoke the spirit of the 1980s, whilst the 1990s are admirably represented by John Cronin, Mary Rose Binchy and Lorcan Walshe. New artists featured in the exhibition this year, meanwhile, include John Brobbel, Manuel Esteban and Leo Toye. The Jorgensen Fine Art Christmas Exhibition runs until December 30.

Karen T. Colbert’s exhibition continues its run at the Belltable Gallery, Limerick until December 14. Committed as she is to the principles of Abstracion, references in her work to the ways in which the everyday world appears to our sense of sight are almost entirely put aside, so that feeling and emotion can be aroused through the interaction of the materials and technique, the media and the various ways the elements of design can be made to behave.

Finally, one exhibition to look out for in the New Year is Eurojet Futures 04 at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Ely Place, Dublin. Selected by RHA director Patrick T. Murphy and Exhibitions Curator Ruth Carroll, highlights are likely to include John Gerrard’s technically superb Watchful Portrait, which utilises cutting-edge real-time 3D technology, Martin Healy’s exploration of urban myths, and Julie Merriman’s beautifully constructed drawings of demolished housing projects.