Jules Michael—Nimmo’s Pier

“Nimmo’s Pier” is an exhibition of recent paintings by Carlow-based artist Jules Michael. Made in her rural studio over the previous eighteen months, the works consist of mostly large-scale, abstracted images, the paintings utilising ideas and sources derived from remnants in architecture and the built environment.

Visible narratives and traces in the infrastructure combine with ideas of ruin, time and her visual research from abandoned or changed places in both rural and urban contexts. The already-made forms, sourced from the pragmatic architecture of cement walls, sheet metal, openings and gable-ends work as a structure for the paintings to proceed.

These forms also function as an anchor, a fact even, in the un-knowing and often contradictory part of the making process. Their shapes test associations, probing the line between abstracted form and concrete visual information. The visual movement around the structure of the painting, its balance - or imbalance - alludes to the mind’s subversive ability to hold or construct a memory. The spatial play, the angles, the not quite fitting shapes reinforce this splintering. In parts there is a slippage, literally, between the gaps, providing a form of release, or a breathing space, from the rigor of the over-painted shapes.

Biography:

With a background in Arts in Healthcare Settings and older people, Jules returned to full-time education in 2009, graduating with a First Class B.A. (Hons) from the Wexford School of Art and Design, followed by an MFA from the National College of Art and Design in 2015. She is a member of 9 Stone Artists, and her studio is alongside where she lives in rural Co Carlow. This is her first solo show.

www.julesmichael.com