Among the Small Trees – Gabhann Dunne

The limpid colour palette in Gabhann Dunne's work gives it a visionary, almost poetic quality. Topographical features, figures, buildings and animals emerge from a richly-opaque ground, conjuring a hauntingly-beautiful parallel world. He uses this romantic landscape to critique humanity's annexation of the natural world and our displacement of other species, often appropriating and re-working found imagery to complement his invented narratives.

This latest body of work is inspired by a visit to Abbeyliex Bog, an experience that reminded the artist of nature’s capacity to endure and rejuvenate. ‘I had grown up in a Kildare,’ Dunne says, ‘where the bogs I’d known were intensely sad spaces, harvested for peat and left exhausted. What I found in Abbeyliex was a living, spiritual space that only existed because people from the local community had fought for its preservation and then restored its vitality. I wrote in my notebook at the time that “it was as though I had walked into a cathedral for moss” and though I could not stay, my life was richer with it as a memory. I want to celebrate that cathedral and the works in this exhibition give voice to that celebration.’

Gabhann Dunne has been described by the art critic, Cristín Leach, writing in The Sunday Times, as 'one of the best Irish painters of his generation’. He is a former winner of the RDS Taylor Art Award and the Hennessy Craig Scholarship at the Royal Hibernian Academy. Earlier this year, his monumental work, Crossing the Salt, comprising 100 painted panels, was added to IMMA’s Permanent Collection.