New Luan Gallery exhibition set to open
Athlone's Luan Gallery is preparing for the opening of 'Affective Forms', a group exhibition featuring work by Tara Carroll, Sian Costello, Phelim Hoey, Áine O'Hara, Day Magee, and Rajinder Singh.
The exhibition will open to the public on Tuesday next, February 10, with the official launch taking place on Friday, February 13, at 6pm.
The launch event will feature a guest address by Dr Tina Kinsella, Head of Research at Dún Laoghaire's Institute of Art, Design and Technology (IADT), as well as a performance by exhibiting artist Day Magee. The exhibition will run until 22 April.
'Affective Forms' is a multidisciplinary exhibition that explores how the human body is represented in contemporary Irish art through painting, photography, sculpture, performance, and film.
The group exhibition highlights the experiences of bodies often overlooked or marginalised in mainstream culture, presenting works that understand the body not as an isolated or idealised figure, but as a sensing, relational, and meaning-making presence. It also looks at how bodies connect emotionally and physically with the spaces and environments around them.
Sian Costello’s paintings use self-portraiture to explore the body, identity, and the history of figurative painting. Working with her own body and camera obscura techniques, she blurs the line between artist and model.
Tara Carroll’s interactive installation 'Resonance Ripples' explores touch, intimacy, community, and connection through collaborative and participatory experience.
The gallery said that, by working through photography, sculpture, and text, Áine O’Hara draws on "lived experience as a multiply disabled, chronically sick queer person".
Created during long periods of bed rest, O’Hara’s work reflects fatigue, pain, and isolation while asserting presence in spaces that often exclude sick and disabled bodies, challenging ideas about access, visibility, and legitimacy.
Phelim Hoey’s film 'MPQ', meanwhile, investigates pain, embodiment, and identity through the lived experience of Multiple Sclerosis. Across film, photography, and sculptural works, Hoey challenges medical language, standard measures of the body, and ideas of productivity, asserting agency over lived experience.
'BODY DOES BE' is a new video installation by Day Magee that looks at how we experience daily life through our bodies and thoughts.
'Held Between Measures' by Rajinder Singh presents photographic and moving-image works along the River Liffey, where suspended bodies engage with land, rope, and gravity
Further information on the exhibition and accompanying upcoming events can be found at luangallery.ie and on Luan Gallery’s social channels @luangalleryathlone on Instagram and Luan Gallery on Facebook.
'Affective Forms' will continue until Sunday, April 12. Admission to the gallery is free for groups and individuals. Tours for schools and groups can be arranged by contacting the gallery in advance. Luan Gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday, from 11am to 5pm, and Sundays from 12 to 5pm.