Stoney Road Press at Vue 2016

Monica Lundy is a Californian artist gifted with an extraordinary technique; she is also, notably, a historian, a detective, a time-traveller and a necromancer.

Through assiduous research of archival materials, she unearths vanished paradigms and reconjures them as haunting historical portraiture.

Through the séance of art-making, she is able, effectively, to raise the spirits of people and places long since faded into obscurity and empower them to whisper their truths into contemporary ears.

The material virtuosity with which she accomplishes this feat is something to behold. In the ten-plus years I have been writing about her work, I have marvelled at the invention with which she finesses, wrangles, and sometimes flat-out strong-arms disparate media into sumptuous celebrations of time, memory, decay, and transformation.' - Essay by Richard Speers.

In 2016 Monica Lundy collaborated with Stoney Road Press to produce new carborundum and gesso prints which explore the history of a number of psychiatric patients from Bethlem Royal Hospital in London during the 1800's. Bethlem: Bethlem Royal Hospital, founded in 1247, was the first institution in the UK to specialise in care for the mentally ill. It’s one of the most famous, and infamous, psychiatric institutions in history.

The word 'bedlam' was derived from the hospital’s prior nickname, which it acquired around the 14th century, for its infamously inhumane treatment of patients (including torture, neglect and putting patients on public display for profit).

The early 19th century brought about shifting social attitudes regarding how the mentally ill should be treated, and the function of 'insane asylums' (also referred to as 'lunacy reform'). In Victorian times, Bethlem Royal Hospital sought to treat only 'curables' (as opposed to 'incurables'), and worked with photographer Henry Hering to take before photographs of patients. Hering then photographed the patients after their release, when they were considered 'cured'.

Hering documented patients throughout the 1850’s. William (1857) and Harriet (1858) are based on Henry Hering photos of two patients from Bethlem Royal Hospital before their medical treatments.

Hillsboro Fine Art at Vue 2016

This year Hillsboro Fine Art will showcase works by emerging Irish contemporary artists Leah Hewson, Gerry Davis and Edwina Bracken alongside some of Ireland’s best known painters and sculptors including Gwen O’Dowd, Patrick Graham, Eilís O’Connell, Jonathan Hunter, Patrick Hall, Michael Warren, Corban Walker, Eddie Kennedy, Paul Doran, John Gibbons, George Warren, John Noel Smith and others.

Major international artists will be well represented too with new works from Sandro Chia, Markus Lüpertz, Tim Scott and Enzo Cucchi.

Eilís O’Connell: Alpha, 2014, cast and fabricated bronze, 43.5 x 61.5 x 14.5cm

Patrick Graham: Studies, mixed media, 81 x 112cm

Patrick Hall: Stone With Bird, oil on canvas, 122 x 153 cm

Artist Richard Gorman wins inaugural Savills Art Prize

Richard Gorman wins Savills Art Prize at VUE 2015

Gorman won the prize for a series of prints made at Stoney Road Press

A series of paintings by Richard Gorman in the RHA Annual Exhibition in 2014. Photograph: David Sleator

Aidan Dunne Irish Times, Thu, Nov 5, 2015

The artist Richard Gorman has been named as the first winner of the Savills Art Prize, a new visual arts award worth €5,000, presented by Savills auctioneers at the opening of Vue 2015, Ireland’s contemporary art fair, tonight.

Gorman is one of the country’s foremost abstract painters. About 20 galleries from throughout Ireland are participating in Vue, which takes place over the weekend at the RHA Gallagher Gallery.

He received the award for a group of prints made at Stoney Road Press in Dublin. “I’m completely delighted,” he said. “These are very large prints, made with laser-cut aluminum and printed on hand-made Indian paper, so it really is a team game. It was James O’Nolan from Stoney Road who came up with the idea and it would have been impossible without their collaboration.”

Born in Dublin in 1946, Gorman has divided his time between Ireland and Milan since the 1980s. He has also worked and exhibited regularly in Japan and Paris. Last year, he became the first Irish artist to design a scarf for Hermes. Primarily a painter, he has also worked extensively in printmaking and, to a lesser extent, sculpture. He will show at Assay One in Milan at the end of November and following that will embark on a new body of work at Atelier Michael Woolworth in Paris.

He makes spare compositions with sharply delineated curvilinear forms using areas of flat, perfectly pitched color. He is known for the exceptional elegance and economy of his work, including several series of innovative hand-made paper pieces in which the pigment is soaked into the thick surface texture of the paper. Stoney Road Press features a display of his work as part of Vue.

Galleries participating in Vue each nominated an artist as a contender for the prize, based on a body of work produced within the last year, and RHA director Dr Patrick Murphy, who has an extensive track record as a curator of contemporary Irish art, adjudicated. Savills MD Angus Potterton pointed out that there is logic to the property company funding an art prize, as most art is destined not for museums but for home and business settings.

Vue began in 2007, in the RDS, and soon ran into the hard years of recession, which stopped the Irish art market in its tracks. It moved to the RHA on Ely Place in 2011.

As well as most of the prime Dublin galleries including the Cross, Eight, Gurley’s, Green on Red, Hillsboro, Ibo Jorgensen, Kevin Kavanagh, the Molesworth, NAG, Olivier Cornet, the Peppercanister, the Rubicon, the Solomon, Taylor Galleries and Oonah Young, the Fenderesky from Belfast and Catherine Hammond from Glengarry are also represented. Print specialists the Graphic Studio, SO Editions and Stoney Road Press are also there.

GALLERY FOCUS: nag

nag Gallery has a defined philosophy which is represented by its artists who have a commonality in process. There is an obsession for detail, refined execution and finish in the disciplines of drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, sculptural installation and film making. nag Gallery also directly represents artists from Japan and Ireland in contemporary bowls and pottery which enhances the nag Gallery philosophy of aesthetics in combining functional and non functional art forms.

nag Gallery was founded by the curator Mark St.John Ellis in 2012. In 2014 nag Offsite was established as an Art Consultancy taking contemporary fine art in to commercial and private interiors throughout Ireland and London, including projects in Kyoto, Japan. By working with such companies as Minima, Bultaup and Farrow and Ball, nag Offsite has evolved its expertise in combining gallery presentation with design. Nag Offsite offers professional advice with technical installation that introduces art in to the home or enhances the installation of existing works of art collectors and enthusiasts alike.

NEWS: Stoney Road Press Announce Richard Gorman Showcase

At this year’s fair Stoney Road Press will be showcasing a major new body of work by Richard Gorman made at Stoney Road Press in 2015. KAN is a series of three monumental (150 x 110cm), and six smaller scale (51 x 38cm), carborundum prints on handmade Indian paper in editions of ten.

KAN takes its title from a Japanese concept. The character 間 (pronounced 'kan') is an essential one in everyday Japanese. The fundamental meaning is “space between,” “gap,” “interval,” “distance.” However, it refers not only to space, but to time as well, meaning, also, "time between," "pause," "break."

Richard Gorman first began collaborating with Stoney Road Press in 2003, producing a series of woodblock prints and 3D works. Recently, he has also collaborated with the fashion house Hérmes to produce his designs on their signature silk scarves. A book of his work published by the Joseph & Anni Albers foundation is also forthcoming. 

GALLERY PROFILE: Hilsboro Fine Art

Founded by gallery director John Daly in 1995, Hillsboro Fine Art is widely recognised as one of Ireland’s leading 20th-century and contemporary galleries and has now established a significant reputation around the world. The gallery represents many of Ireland’s best know artists and also host at least two to three exhibitions per year by major international artists.

The gallery is conveniently located one minute from O'Connell Street in the cultural and social heart of Georgian Dublin. Originally called Rutland Square, Parnell Square is the second earliest of Dublin's squares and is also the location of Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, which houses one of Ireland's foremost collections of modern and contemporary art, including the wonderful Francis Bacon Studio.

Artists represented include Michael Warren, Sandro Chia, Eilís O’Connell, Patrick Graham, Gwen O’Dowd, John Noel Smith, Enzo Cucchi, John Gibbons, Katherine Gili, Eddie Kennedy, Alan Davie, Corban Walker, George Warren, Paddy Mc Cann, Eamon Colman, David Crone and others

NEWS: Hilsboro Fine Art Announce Artists for VUE

Hilsboro Fine Art will be showing work by Alan Davie, John Noel Smith, Eilís O’Connell, and Farrell Brickhouse at this year's fair. 

GALLERY PROFILE: Stoney Road Press

Stoney Road Press is a fine art publishing house which since 2001 has been collaborating with Ireland's leading contemporary artists to produce limited edition hand-made prints, books, sculptures and tapestries.

Based in Dublin, Stoney Road Press is the only independent commercially run fine art print studio in Ireland. It is also the only Irish member of the International Fine Print Dealers Association, a body committed to promoting the highest standards of quality, connoisseurship and appreciation of fine art prints.

Combining traditional printing techniques with innovative digital technology, the studio is transformed for each different collaboration, producing a body of work which reflects the individual skill of each artist. In recent years the portfolio has expanded to include new work with international artists.

Stoney Road Press exhibits regularly at art fairs in Ireland, the UK and USA.