View exhibition in Ashbourne

Running until 8th July in the Toradh Gallery, Ashbourne, is ‘View’, an exhibition of paintings by Siobhán Fitzpatrick, who lives and works in County Meath. This body of work was developed with funding from Meath County Council Arts Office’s Professional Artists Development Fund.

‘View’ references a genre of topographical landscape painting popular in the latter half of the 18th century, which documented the landed estates, vantage point views, towns and popular historical sites of the time. These paintings depicted the Irish landscape at a time when the establishment of a categorization for aesthetic taste and appreciation of the landscape literally resulted in a pictorialization of nature and the re plantation of many country estates to create an aspect or view that reflected the sublime and uncultivated.

The exhibition records a period of extensive alteration in the town/rural scape. The ‘Celtic Tiger’ years brought about expansive and, at times, contentious development throughout the country. In referencing the 18th century notion of the view or perspective, this series of paintings seeks to form a visual document which records the altered view of the past 10-15 years within the framework of a recognisable landscape genre.

The gallery is open to the public during library opening hours.