• Plantation, oil on canvas, 75 x 80 cm, 2018
  • Relocation III, oil on canvas, 50 x 50 cm, 2018.
  • Relocation II, oil on canvas, 50 x 40 cm, 2018.
  • Relocation, oil on canvas, 75 x 80 cm, 2018.
  • Transition, oil on canvas, 80 x 60 cm, 2018. (1)

Gillian Lawler

My work explores ideas concerning architectural unease, referencing imaginary, fictional landscapes that explore a dystopian science-fiction terrain. My work highlights the peculiar aspects of contemporary architectural design, often exaggerated through heightened perspective, leaving the viewer with a sense of sublimity laced with unease. Recurring checker board motifs accentuate a definite but skewed anti-perspective, which herein add to a surreal, dreamlike sense of discomfort, where what appears to have been planned according to a perspectival logic is withheld and subverted. Suspended, grounded and hovering structures conceal their ghostly inhabitants, confronting the viewer with wasteland, suggesting a vast and fragile future or past: a spatial, structural and psychological schism.


Bibliography

Lawler received a BA in Fine Art from NCAD in 2000. She has won numerous awards including the Graphic Studio Dublin Print Award Residency 2019, the Golden Fleece Award Merit prize 2013, the overall winner of the Open Selection Exhibition Award at the Eigse Arts Festival in 2009 and the Hennessy Craig Award, RHA Gallery Annual exhibition in 2007. She has shown extensively in Ireland and abroad including New York, London, Rotterdam, Zagreb and Turin and is represented by the Molesworth Gallery and has a solo exhibition with the Weber and Weber Gallery in early 2021.


She is co-founder/member of the group Difference Engine, an evolving serial exhibition, and a model of autonomous artist curation, by artists Gordon Cheung, Mark Cullen, Jessica Foley, Wendy Judge & Gillian Lawler. Each Manifestation of Difference Engine is based upon an ongoing collaboration, a kind of ‘Jamming’, between the artists. The result yields engaging experimental exhibitions combining installation, video, painting, sculpture and writing.

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