Justin Fitzpatrick | Photon pump | 2021 | Oil on canvas, oak frame

For Culture night 2023 the Arts Council will once again proudly showcase a selection of works recently added to its extensive Visual Art Collection.

To celebrate the evening we are sharing some insight on each of the artist and artworks which will be on display:

‘Photon Pump (2021) was exhibited in the second gallery of Alpha Salad, subtitled ‘Photons’, which references a lunar eclipse in England in 1715, the beginning of the Enlightenment and a time with the Science and Reason were eclipsing religion and belief as the dominant ways of understanding the world. Photons are a fundamental unit of electromagnetic force, or more simply, tiny light particles that carry energy.

The painting depicts a bulbous, curvilinear form that is part plant and part erotic asphyxiation apparatus. Against a chromatically tiered background reminiscent of the four elements, two figures can be discerned gestating or ejaculating through a sheath of black latex, a visual and conceptual pun on the germinating seed.’

I am interested in the act of painting to explore the idea of conceptual metaphors that structure our world view and perspective. For me, painting, in an improvisational mode, can turn the process of metaphor into a visual performance, a constant sliding across the surface of a subject, it can enact the semantic jumps the mind makes when likening one thing to another and it provides evidence of this fundamental activity. I have used text and text like forms in my paintings a lot, and my interest is around the borders of where text becomes body, things that can hover between legibility and sensibility. I am interested in the choosing of objects to invest with meaning and create a narrative, but also to look at the mechanics and syntax of that meaning and how it is created. Painting becomes a machine that allows metonymic growth, a kind of world building.’

Justin Fitzpatrick (b.1985 Dublin, Ireland) lives and works in Montargis, France. He studied at the St. Oswald’s School of Painting, London, from 2004-2007, and earned his MFA fin Painting rom the Royal College of Art in 2015. Recent solo exhibitions include: Alpha Salad, The Tetley, Leeds UK (2022), Omega Salad, Seventeen, London (2020); A Pulsation of the Artery, Foxy Production, New York US (2019), URIZEN, Sultana, Paris FR (2019) and Underworld, Kevin Space, Vienna AT (2018). Recent group exhibitions include: Whisky et Tabou, Musée Estrine, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence (2017), Amazing girls / It’s complicated, Kevinspace, Vienna, (2017) Streams of Warm Impermanence, DRAF, London (2016); Animal Mundi – Barbican Arts Trust, London (2016); Life is On, Jakob Kroon Galerie, Stockholm (2016); Caput Medusae, Westminster Waste, London (2016); I would have done everything for you…Gimme more!, London (2016); and Bloomberg New Contemporaries, ICA, London (2015).

The Arts Council Collection was established in 1962 and now comprises almost 1,350 works of modern and contemporary Irish art.

This year we are delighted to once again welcome audiences to the Arts Council buildings on Merrion Square to engage with some our most recent acquisitions.

Works by many of Ireland’s leading artists will be shown on the night including pieces by: Elizabeth Cope, Miriam De Búrca, Mollie Douthit, Justin Fitzpatrick, Marie Holohan, Helen Hughes, Catriona Leahy, Jialin Long, Kevin Mooney, Doireann Ní Ghrioghair, Emma Roche, Mark Swords, Amna Walayat and Orla Whelan.

As well as this glimpse into the Arts Council Collection for Culture Night, artworks can be seen all year round throughout the country as part of exhibitions and long term loans in public buildings such as hospitals, universities and schools.

Explore the Collection and more on our website here.