PHOTOS Maurice Quillinan ‘Within the hour of the slowest clock’ exhibition runs until November 30 at Limerick Museum

Cllr Maria Donoghue, Maurice Quillinan and Dr Matthew Potter pictured at the launch of Within the hour of the slowest clock exhibition at Limerick Museum. Picture: Olena Oleksienko/ilovelimerick

Maurice Quillinan launches ‘Within the hour of the slowest clock’ exhibition at the Limerick Museum, a collaborative effort between art and poetry

Limerick Museum presents ‘Within the hour of the slowest clock’, an exhibition of recent paintings by Maurice Quillinan until November 29, 2024.

Maurice Quillinan’s eight large format oil on linen paintings in his exhibition  ‘Within the hour of the slowest clock’ at the Limerick Museum, (Old Franciscan Friary) Henry Street, began life two years ago when he and the Limerick poet Paul Sweeney met to discuss embarking on a collaborative project to see what would come out of a dialogue between poetry and painting, using the waterways around Limerick City as the main inspiration.

Many discussions and two years later Paul Sweeney’s poem ‘Decastitch’ came to life along with the eight paintings in this exhibition. Both worked from either the Corbally Baths or the old Guinness Canal, which runs as an offshoot from the Shannon River near Plassey to where it meets the Abbey River next to the Absolute Hotel.

advertisement
advertisement

advertisement
advertisement

advertisement
advertisement

Quillinan’s work looks at the layering of repetitive human dramas which take place repeatedly, with little learning from history’s misadventures. Each painting is a palimpsest of anonymous participations and interactions which take place at seemingly random junctures. The lettering in the works refer to the memories of individual meditations on whatever brought the person to this point in their lives.

Their participation willingly or unwillingly is left as a presence both resolved and unresolved. Thus water, like our history of memories and experiences has no boundaries, its Surface Tension of the present is momentary, and is employed in this series of paintings as a metaphor where everything and nothing is real, things, surfaces and reflections all fleetingly coalesce for a moment, then, like the participants and the viewer go their own way with only the things they carry.

As a visual artist Maurice Quillinan’s instinctive response to a subject that interests him is to draw it, not to make a representation, but to understand it through a ritual of repetitive mark-making. For him he believes that it is impossible to understand anything without obsessively, rigorously drawing it repeatedly. This ritual obsession negates the need for a beginning or an end, it is looking and making, work evolves from work, all that is left are the marks of having been in a particular place and time in history.

Maurice Quillinan grew up in Limerick, He studied at the Limerick School of Art and Design (LSAD), the Royal College of Art, London (RCA), the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris and the University of Limerick (UL). He has been a recipient of many awards, including Limerick City Vocational Educational Scholarships (VEC) awards, The Henry Moore Foundation Scholarship, a number of Arts Council awards, Culture Ireland awards, Limerick City and County Council awards and bursaries. He has represented Ireland in exhibitions in many countries, both in one person and group at home and internationally. His works are held in public and private collections in thirty-four countries.

The launch also featured a very interesting address by Dr Anca Minescu, Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Limerick, which was read by her colleague Leticia Scheidt, and a poetry reading by Paul Sweeney.

Dr Matthew Potter, Curator of Limerick Museum added, “Maurice Quillinan is a long-standing friend of Limerick Museum. The eight large format oil on linen paintings in this exhibition began life two years ago when he and the Limerick poet Paul Sweeney met to discuss embarking on a collaborative project to see what would come out of a dialogue between poetry and painting, using the waterways around Limerick City as the main inspiration. We are delighted and honoured to host Maurice’s work in this ground-breaking exhibition.”

‘Within the hour of the slowest clock’ will be on display in Limerick Museum until November, 30 2024. Limerick Museum is situated in the Old Franciscan Friary on Henry Street, next door to Dunnes Stores. The museum is open to the public Monday to Friday, 10.00am to 5.00pm; Saturday, 10.00am-1.00pm and 2.00pm to 5.00pm.

Admission is FREE.

Pictures: Olena Oleksienko/ilovelimerick