‘Boulder Milt’ exhibition by Seán Cotter at LCGA running up to March 30

Artist Seán Cotter Photographed at the opening of LCGA ‘Boulder Milt’ exhibition with his work Benahavis. Photograph Liam Burke/Press 22

Cavan artist Seán Cotter presents his first Limerick City Gallery of Art exhibition, ‘Boulder Milt’, running up to March 30, 2025

Cavan artist, Seán Cotter has brought his exhibition, ‘Boulder Milt’ to the Limerick City Gallery of Art (LCGA).

A graduate of the National College of Art & Design, Dublin, the artist is exhibiting for the first time at LCGA having previously exhibited solo and group shows in Ireland and internationally.

Having been on many residencies in Iceland and Finland, Boulder Milt is the artist’s first solo show at Limerick City Gallery of Art (LCGA).

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The Cavan native’s residencies in Finland and Iceland have highlighted his concern for the impacts of climate change on planet Earth.

“In 2020, Seán Cotter walked across Iceland on a one-month artist’s residency, finding fragments of light on the Sólheimajökull Glacier. In this place, over thousands of years, ice has been compressed, losing almost all oxygen, forced out by intense pressure,” reads an extract from an essay by Dr Ciara Healy on Cotter’s work which will be included in a LCGA publication to be launched towards the beginning of March, it continues, “This pure glacial ice, the colour of sapphires, reflects the blue colours of the light spectrum. On a nearby bay, a volcanic black sand beach is scattered with glacial ice from the lagoon—inky black and luminous gemstones marooned between time, melting in a bowl of clouds.”

In the early weeks of January 2025 we witnessed the devastating impact on people, their lives and the landscape in California of the wildfires – the direct result of our disregard for nature and how this has led to catastrophic consequences.

Dr Healy’s essay reads it was there that Cotter “felt a bittersweet connection to the slowly vanishing white, hearing the groans of glaciers as they journeyed toward the sea”.

She continues, “Their shrinking mass a stark symbol of environmental fragility, of memory and impermanence, themes that have long influenced his work.

“Cotter’s experience of Iceland’s dynamic landscapes and the delicate, fractured ice beneath him, carried the weight of urgency: to capture these old worlds and the stories of our ancestors as they are extinguished one by one. In this collection of paintings, we see ourselves, with a shock, on this earth: suddenly inconsequential, irrelevant, and tiny.”

The artist’s influence from the force of nature and ever-changing landscapes can be seen in is works, with Dr Healy noting, “In 2021, Cotter travelled to Spain and observed a 2,000-meter-high peak in the Málaga region engulfed by forest fires, which ultimately destroyed 7,000 hectares of land and led to the evacuation of 2,500 residents.

“The blaze prompted the use of seaplanes, running trips constantly back and forth from the sea to the burning mountain to drop water. Watching this event, helpless, underscored his sense of our vulnerability to nature, revealing the tenuous nature of our sense of control.

“The landscape’s destruction was a stark warning about the consequences of environmental neglect. Yet, despite so much clear evidence, political narratives continue to downplay the impact of climate change and instead continue to perpetuate known patterns of destruction”.

Seán Cotter’s ‘Boulder Milt’ will run at Limerick City Gallery of Art, launched on January 24, the exhibition will be open to the public up to March 30, 2025.