XENIA IM SCHNEE 8.5.2025 - 8.6.2025. Villa Concordia, Bamberg, Germany

Solo presentation

Laptops, tangerines and diaries float free from the laws of gravity while sun, rain and snow conduct colour harmonies of their own invention. The installation includes painted interventions and period furniture from Villa Concordia’s collection. The exhibition presents work made while the artist was on residency at the International Künstlerhaus, Bamberg, Germany.

https://www.villa-concordia.de/aktuelles/veranstaltungen/detail/ausstellung-mairead-oheocha

MOLY-SABATA, Fondation Albert Gleizes. April & May 2025 Sablons, France

Artist residency

The artist was invited for a residency from April to June 2025 with the support of the Consulate General of Ireland (Lyon). The residency includes a commissioned work for the consulate's new premises.

-https://www.moly-sabata.com/2025/04/mairead-o%e2%80%99heocha/

15 years, P420 Gallery 6.2.2025 - 5.4.2025. Bologna, Italy

Group Exhibition

Featured artists: Helene Appel, Riccardo Baruzzi, Irma Blank, Adelaide Cioni, Marie Cool Fabio Balducci, John Coplans, June Crespo, Filippo de Pisis, Victor Fotso Nyie, Laura Grisi, Milan Grygar, Rodrigo Hernández, Paolo Icaro, Merlin James, Ana Lupas, Piero Manai, Richard Nonas, Mairead O’hEocha, Francis Offman, Alessandro Pessoli, Stephen Rosenthal, Joachim Schmid, Alessandra Spranzi, Monika Stricker, Goran Trbuljak, Franco Vaccari, Pieter Vermeersch, Shafei Xia

https://p420.it/exhibitions/585/15_years

Photocredit: C.Favero

All Flowers In Time Bend Towards The Sun, 14.2.2025 - 11.5.2025 Dublin Castle, Ireland.

Group Exhibition

Featured artists: Nina Canell (SE), Elizabeth Peyton (USA), Lauren Conway (IRL), Christy Brown (IRL), Aleana Egan (IRL), Genieve Figgis (IRL), Paul Hallahan (IRL), Samir Mahmood (PAK/IRL), Maria Maarbjerg (DEN/IRL), William McKeown (NI), Mairead O’hEocha (IRL) Adrian O’Carroll (IRL), Linda Quinlan (IRL), Eva Rothschild (IRL/UK), Anne Tallentire (NI), Luke van Gelderen (IRL), Marcel Vidal (IRL), Lee Welch (IRL/USA), Michael Warren (IRL)

www.hallahanwelch.com

Photo credit: Lee Welch

FOOTFALLS 15.11.24 -21.11.24 Britta Rettberg Gallery, Munich, Germany

Group Exhibition

Footfalls exhibition is part of Zeitgeist Irland 24, a joint initiative between Culture Ireland and the Embassy of Ireland in Germany.

Artists: Bassam Issa Al-Sabah, Laura Gannon, Lauren Gault, Alan Magee, Alice Maher, Laura Ní Fhlaibhín, Mairead O'hEocha, Niamh O'Malley. Curated by Yara Sonseca Mas.

https://brittarettberg.com/exhibition/footfalls/

LIGHT SPELLS ENTER 25th February - 29th April 2023 P420 Gallery Bologna, Italy

Solo presentation

Ben Eastham writes “O’hEocha describes her experience of that period as ‘triple-glazed’, and the phrase suggests the way that screens distort our worlds in ways consistent with the often monstrous proportions of objects in these paintings. Yet it also conjures the sense of being caught between panes of glass, trapped in the airless and claustrophobic space between two worlds. And here all order breaks down, as I consider where the light of these paintings comes from and what it might entail. Am I on the outside looking in, or on the inside looking out? “


https://www.p420.it/exhibitions/436/Light_spells_enter

Photo credit: C. Favero

THE PANE FLY’S TUNE 13.4.2023 - 20.5.2023 mother’s tankstation gallery, London, UK

Solo Presentation

https://www.motherstankstation.com/exhibition/the-pane-flys-tune/

DI SEMPLITICÀ E DI BRIVIDO P420 Gallery Bologna, Italy

Group Exhibition in collaboration with Davide Ferri 09 April – 11 June 2022

Di semplicità e di brivido consists of a dialogue between 25 works by one of the most important painters of the 20th century in Italy, Filippo de Pisis (Ferrara, 1896 – Milan 1956), and the works of seven international painters – Richard Aldrich (Hampton, 1975), Michael Berryhill (El Paso, 1972), Luca Bertolo (Milan, 1968), Paul Housley (Stalybridge, UK, 1964), Merlin James (Cardiff, UK, 1960), Mairead O’hEocha (Dublin, 1962), Maaike Schoorel (Santpoort, 1973) – invited to establish an interaction with the works of de Pisis.

SLOW PAINTING, 2019, Group exhibition, Leeds City Gallery, UK

https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/about/touring-programme/hayward-touring/slow-painting

Curated by the writer and critic Martin Herbert, Slow Painting features nineteen artists, primarily British or UK based, whose work spans a myriad of styles and applications, from figuration to abstraction. Slow Painting aims to explore multiple aspects of what slowness might mean in relation to recent painting. It includes works that, variously, have taken long periods to gestate, ask for and reward sustained looking, and also engage with the arc of time itself: from the continuum of art history, to wider cultural and political histories, to the cosmic.

Exhibiting artists: Darren Almond, Athanasios Argianas, Michael Armitage, Gareth Cadwallader, Varda Caivano, Lubaina Himid, Paul Housley, Merlin James, Allison Katz, Simon Ling, Lucy McKenzie, Mairead O'hEocha, Yelena Popova, Carol Rhodes, Sherman Sam, Benjamin Senior, Michael Simpson, Tim Stoner and Caragh Thuring.

 

SHAPING IRELAND, 2019, Group exhibition, National Gallery of Ireland, IRL

https://www.nationalgallery.ie/art-and-artists/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/shaping-ireland-landscapes-irish-art

Spanning 250 years, Shaping Ireland: Landscapes in Irish Art comprised artworks by fifty artists, exploring the relationship between people and the natural world. Encompassing a range of artistic media and perspectives, this exhibition examined different land types and uses, revealing the significant role artists have played in visualising aspects of human impact on the environment. The exhibition was accompanied by a fully illustrated publication, featuring a selection of expert responses by individuals such as Paula Meehan (poet), Mary Reynolds (landscape designer), Duncan Stewart (environmentalist) and John Tuomey (architect), among others.

Curator: Donal Maguire, National Gallery of Ireland

 

IRISES IN THE WELL, 2018, Solo exhibition, mother’s tankstation, London, UK

http://www.motherstankstation.com/exhibition/irises-in-the-well/

“Held within the breadth of the title, O’hEocha iterates an “active paralysis”, that finds expression in depictions of the city, her city, as an extension of imagination. Sometimes movement; moon clouds over Sandymount beach (more permanent or timeless for exclusion the iconic Dublin ‘Pigeon House’), falling snow, while elsewhere objects are statified, petrified or mummified even, as in Cabinet of Herons, Natural History Museum. O’hEocha, considers subject matter, ‘real things’, places, but collapsed, contracted or expanded through the telescopics of time, space and memory.”*
*mother’s tankstation, 2018

 

ENCOUNTERING THE LAND, 2018, Group Exhibition, VISUAL, Carlow, IRL

https://www.visualcarlow.ie/exhibitions/info/art-works-2018

How does rural life inspire us? What are the challenges facing farmers today? Do you know where your food comes from and how it’s produced? These questions and more are asked in engaging and creative ways by the artists selected for ARTWORKS 2018. In an exhibition that includes photography, painting, film and performance, the romance and the rough of rural life are considered. Ideas relating to our agrarian history, the rural as a sanctuary and the land as provider, are presented.

Exhibition selectors: Orla Barry, Sean Kissane, Emma Lucy O’Brien, Curator VISUAL, Carlow.

 

AN ACT OF HOSPITALITY CAN ONLY BE POETIC, 2018, Group Exhibition, Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda, IRL

http://www.highlanes.ie/Activity.aspx?ActivityID=3345

‘An Act of Hospitality can only be poetic’ – Jacques Derrida. Inspired by a quote by Jacques Derrida, this exhibition curated by Linda Shevlin and Aoife Ruane seeks to present works that responds to themes of hospitality, identity, friendship and the multitude of journeys and conflicts encountered to attain them.

Curated by Linda Shevlin

 

MÁLVERKASÝNING, 2017, Group Exhibition, i8 Gallery, Reykjavik, ISL

https://i8.is/exhibitions/155/installation_shots/#/image_popup/image641/

Malverkasyning is an Icelandic word to describe method and meaning and is unique to Icelandic language. From abstraction to figuration, this exhibition of works proposes a variety of visual expansions on the word through paint.

Artists: Lara Viana, Andreas Eriksson, James White, Mairead O’hEocha, Melanie Smith, Silke Otto-Knapp

 

A PAINTER’S DOUBT: PAINTING & PHENOMENOLOGY, 2017, Group Exhibition, Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg, AU

http://www.salzburger-kunstverein.at/en/exhibitions/current/2017-02-25/a-painters-doubt/4

This exhibition modestly raises questions of phenomenology today through the lens of several contemporary painters. Some of the painters are working with more abstract forms of expression, while others are painting figuratively or representationally. Landscape painting is also present in this exhibition. The common denominator is a link the curator makes around ideas of perception and examining aspects of phenomena, as identifiable in each of the artists’ work.

Curated by Seamus Kealy, Director, Salzburger Kunstverein

 

2116: FORECAST OF THE NEXT CENTURY, 2016, Group Exhibition, Glucksman at University College Cork, IRL & Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, USA

http://www.glucksman.org/exhibitions/2116-forecast-of-the-next-century

2116: Forecast of the next century features 16 Irish artists whose works present a vision of our changing society, the technological advances, progress and decline that will shape the coming century. Taking place one hundred years after the Easter Rising, 2116 is a platform for what is rising now and a way for Ireland in all its definitions to begin to imagine what lies ahead.

Curated by Chris Clarke, Caitlín Doherty and Fiona Kearney

 

BLACKBIRDS IN THE GARDEN OF PRISMS, 2016, Solo Exhibition, mother’s tankstation, Dublin, IRL

http://www.motherstankstation.com/exhibition/blackbirds-in-the-garden-of-prisms/overview/

“O’hEocha’s newest paintings – seven of which feature at Mother’s Tankstation – also seek latent vitality in undervalued material, this time by turning her admiring attention to that most banal of art genres: the still life. Cryptically titled ‘Blackbirds in the Garden of Prisms’ (2016), this body of effulgent botanical painting is, perhaps, more deliriously sensuous than much of the artist’s work to date. Zoom in on the bursting, drooping blooms of Plant Dressage with Escaped Cobra – a medley of scarlet, creamy white, and pale blue flowers against a glamorously intense black background – and we see the intimate micro-world of O’hEocha’s reticently excited brushwork: dainty smears, smudges and scribbles that bring these fragile organic forms into lustrous being.” *

* Declan Long, Frieze, November 2016

 

COUP DE VILLE, WARP, CONTEMPORARY ART PLATFORM, 2016, Group Exhibition, Sint‐Niklaas, BE

http://warp-art.be/en/artists/Mairead_O%E2%80%99_hEocha

Coup de Ville is an artistic tour at various locations in the city featuring more than 30 artists from Belgium and from all over the world. Coup de Ville quite literally refers to committing a coup (in the city) - but naturally is interpreted poetically in this context. The first edition of Coup de Ville occurred in 2010, under the auspices of artistic director Stef Van Bellingen, in collaboration with the late art expert Jan Hoet. Later editions took place in 2013 and 2016.

Curated by Stef Van Bellingen

 

THE MUD OF COMPOUND EXPERIENCE, 2016, Group Exhibition, mother's tankstation and Leo Xu Projects, Hong Kong, HK

http://www.motherstankstation.com/exhibition/the-mud-of-compound-experience/

The exhibition takes its title and purpose from the ideas of the relatively obscure Russian composer, Alfred Schnittke, whose writings on ‘Polystylism’ during the 1970s, creatively proposed to bring together things within unexpected taxonomic combination, to reveal inherent individuality though sudden – violent even – fusion, contrast and comparison. All the artists whose works are ‘fused’ by The Mud of Compound Experience bring powerfully singular purpose to their practices, directed towards a questioning of the nature and earning of individual art objects.

 

GALLERY 2, 2014, Solo Exhibition, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, IRL

http://www.douglashydegallery.com/mairead-oheocha-g2

“This recent work, Hoarding Lights and Rain, features a hoarding in Stephens Green. As subject matter, a hoarding with industrial lights in rain shouldn't be of much interest, but O'hEocha creates a composition that is dramatic, energetic and beautiful. The thin wintry branches, the troubled sky, the brownbox hoarding lit with a gloriously beautiful prismatic downward plunging light and the slanting driving rain are pure drama. And that swathe of blue lifts the scene so that colour, movement, form are magnificently handled here.” *

*Irish Independent, Niall MacMonagle 23.2.2015

 

ART 44 BASEL STATEMENTS, 2013, Solo Exhibition, Art Basel, CH

http://www.motherstankstation.com/exhibition/3636/

This exhibition of works depict scenes that shift between day and night. Clouds, colour, concrete and sand embrace both the fugitive and fixed elements of landscape painting. Both historic and contemporary in their iconography, they reconfigure specific locations within the artist’s local environment. The eleven oil panels move across received divisions between physical and mental imagining and the virtual and the real.

 

THE SKY WAS YELLOW AND THE SUN WAS BLUE, 2012, Solo Exhibition, mother’s tankstation, Dublin, IRl

http://www.motherstankstation.com/exhibition/the-sky-was-yellow-and-the-sun-was-blue/

“The rural garden centre is a strange premise, born of the desire to reclaim, tame and aestheticise the land, they are sites rooted in the wish to check nature itself. As aesthetic objects and sites, there is a luminescence that supersedes their status as pure exchange value: caught in the optimistic gaze of O’hEocha’s works, a preformed pond becomes the possibility of transcendence, the sky an unseen wash of pinks and greys and greens. Wholly artificial spaces and objects though they might depict, O’hEocha’s paintings articulate the hope or promise of beauty that pervades the everyday.”*

*Rebecca O’Dwyer, Paper Visual Art, 2012.

 

VIA AN LÁR, 2011, Solo Exhibition, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, IRL

http://www.douglashydegallery.com/mairead-oheocha-gallery-1

“The Douglas Hyde Gallery has a formidable history of exhibiting works of merit, murk and melancholia. ‘Via An lár’ (Via the Centre), a survey of recent paintings by Mairead O’hEocha, was no exception. Sixteen small oils-on-board, named after the places they represent, are all composed from a roadside vantage point; these curious, deserted scenes hang at even intervals around the gallery’s concrete bunker appearing like film stills from a silent road movie, a travelogue of the unfamiliar set within Brutalist surrounds.” *

*Isobel Harbison, Frieze, October, 2011

 

WHISPER CONCRETE, 2011, Solo Exhibition, Butler Gallery, Kilkenny, IRL.

http://www.butlergallery.com/mairead-oheocha-whisper-concrete/

“Irish Artist Mairead O’hEocha transforms the mundane into something almost epic with an impressive show of paintings from the past five years at The Butler Gallery in Kilkenny. She has turned her eye towards the wheelie bins, blank gable ends and quirky garden ornaments of roadside locations around the country, envisioning them as landscapes in near-heroic mode.” *

*Cristin Leech, 15 April 2011

 

HOME RULES, 2008, Solo Exhibition, mother’s tankstation, Dublin, IRL.

http://www.motherstankstation.com/exhibition/home-rules/

These works expand on interpretations of what ‘home’ might mean as a symbol of stability, security or comfort. The virtual connectivity of our global environment ensures insularity is, superficially at least, a thing of the past. ‘Home’ as a concept becomes an increasingly complex space where boundaries are continually negotiated, exploited, contested and inevitably made more complex.

 
Contemporary Irish Artist Mairead_O_hEocha_Church_St_Gorey_Wexford_large.jpg

From the Archive - Mairead O’hEocha via An Lár Gallery 1

This month as part of our From the Archive Project, we would like to thank William Lyons for contributing to the series. William wanted to look back at the exhibition by Mairead O’hEocha, via An Lár, which took place in 2011. In response, we have updated this page to include installation images and images of the artworks included in the exhibition, as well as links to a selection of reviews from the time. 

We have also included the now sold out exhibition catalogue, which was published to coincide with O’hEocha’s subsequent exhibition in Gallery 2 in 2014. The publication considered via An Lár, in the context of the body of work exhibited in 2014, including a re-print of Isobel Harbison’s review of ‘via An Lár’ originally published in Frieze.

Mairead O'hEocha paints small landscapes that are both graceful and intelligent. Low-keyed pictures, coloured predominantly in elegant shades of grey, green, and blue, they are rooted in a painterly tradition of modest and sensitive observation that includes artists as various as Corot, Morandi, and Maureen Gallace.

Nevertheless, in their quiet way, Mairead O'hEocha's images are unmistakably contemporary and individual. More often than not they depict Irish edgelands, those curious but unremarkable places where cities and towns merge with the natural landscape. And as the Irish countryside, in recent years, has become more and more developed, so there are increasingly frequent instances of incongruent juxtapositions between the rural vernacular and styles of modern urban life. These are the liminal areas that the paintings reflect. O'hEocha does not comment directly on the uneasy contradictions of the Irish edgelands; her paintings, which are neither approving nor critical, seem to gaze, with distant affection, on those overlooked parts of Ireland where a sense of belonging and permanence is being slowly eroded and replaced with a mood of transience and uncertainty.

Several of the more recent images in this exhibition are of Dublin, the capital and economic hub of the country. But this is a city that is not immediately recognizable; what we see is a place in a process of uneasy change, where the centre doesn't hold and where only peripheral corners and forgotten edges seem to have any connection with the comforting resonances of the past.

The Douglas Hyde Gallery gratefully acknowledges the help and support of the artist; Finola Jones of mother's tankstation, Dublin; and Anna O'Sullivan of the Butler Gallery (which recently held a related exhibition of Mairead O'hEocha's work).

Text by John Hutchinson

Contemporary Irish Artist Mairead_O_hEocha.jpg