By Rose Rushe
SIX chambers of the ground floor of Limerick City Gallery of Art are host ‘PROTOYPES’, works in “sculpture, visual and spacial interventions”, as artist Denis McNulty puts it. There is even a digital sign in People’s Park to the rear signifying intent, ideology and by its merit, his skillset. It pulses in mega-watt capital letters with the upbeat observation, ‘GETTING TO KNOW WHAT YOU LIKE AND WHAT YOU LOVE’.
A big launch on July 17 introduced Limerick to McNulty’s first solo exhibition at a public institution in Ireland; the Green and Red gallery in Dublin represents his work for buyers.
We have a former Shinnors Scholarship (2009) winner to thank for this significance, Mary Conlon, who now works out of Ormston House.
Curator of ‘PROTOTYPES’, at the gallery she tells Arts page how the conversation with this internationally ranked artist began through work exposure, links with writing by Italian philosopher Italo Cavali and her contract with the scholarship to curate an exhibition at LCGA. It is also integral to her PhD examination.
“Areas and interests overlapped and [Dennis’ show] comprises of works going back five years, so existing, new and recent pieces are included.”
There are also elements of the Permanent Collection here, those whose title is ‘Untitled’.
Referring to Cavali’s predictive ‘Six Memos to the Next Millennium’, Conlon feels there are lots of ways of reading Cavali’s text. She drew forward three keys in curating McNulty’s works for LCGA specificity: “language, space, technology”.
You’ll have fun with his solidly structured shapes as he builds firmly on his primary degree in Mechanical Engineering. “For a long time working as an artist I tried to deny or suppress it… and realised I had to let go of that, express it. We think of engineering as an applied thing but it’s much more of a way of seeing the world.
“I start with an idea and look to express it as a visual or work.”
Case in point re language, space and technology is a piece that McNulty describes as enigmatic and looks to be a 10ft tall foil triangular space. Called after a line in the Talking Heads’ song ‘Once in a Lifetime’, peek through a hidden shaft to see the provocation of ‘AND YOU MAY ASK YOURSELF’ spelled out, letter by letter in neon red, looped to infinity.
Look to Limerick City Gallery of Art for this engagement between ideas, the world of tech and spatial language until September 19 and go online at www.dennismcnulty.com for support narrative.
