A Monument to Abstract Thinking

AN exhibition of new work by Kilkenny artist Eamon Colman is opening on this Friday evening in a Vienna gallery.

The Sternstudio gallery exhibition, titled 'Monument', features 24 paintings rendered in acrylic and oil paint on unstretched linen. The images in the series “conflate forgotten histories with a contemporary sense of belonging through these imaginings of experienced and conceptual local landscapes".

"Entailed in the process of making this series, a probing of the rural identity alongside issues of belief both religious and political were excavated adopting an ethnographical approach. Colman, by focusing on the locale of where he lives in rural Ireland, and of Ireland as the most westerly island in Europe thus forms a foundation from which to navigate the larger world," according to the gallery’s website, www.stemstudio.artport.at.

"He, as a cultural geographer recognises the global ‘uneven geographical developments’ as outlined by David Harvey that remain poignant in Ireland's recent Celtic Tiger history. The particularity of the locale is embedded in cultural beliefs and thus reflected in ‘Monument'. A characterisation of something physical, a shrine that is fluid, a space and subjective place for navigating potentiality of the local narratives of identity, history, politics and economy together emphasising a unique and particular standpoint."

A native of Dublin, Mr Colman has been a member of Aosdana since 2007. His exhibition in Sternstudio continues until December 10.