Irish Art Scene

Vanitas - Patrick Redmond October 13th ~ October 28th, 2011, Molesworth Gallery In his latest body of work created for a collaboration between The Molesworth Gallery and the Wexford Arts Centre, Patrick Redmond engages with the vanitas theme that has pre-occupied generations of artists stretching back through the Renaissance to medieval funerary art and further still to the classical art of ancient Greece and Rome. Vanitas is a Latin word, meaning ‘emptiness’ and when applied to a painting is typically understood as work symbolising the meaninglessness of earthly or temporal - as opposed to spiritual - life. Typically, vanitas paintings have included symbols such as skulls, smoke, watches, hour glasses and decaying fruit to remind us of the ethereal nature of our existence. Redmond takes the theme and applies it first to meticulously-executed paintings of soap bubbles with all their connotations of the brevity of existence and the suddenness of death. Painted against a black back...