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As I walk into the Kevin Kavanagh
Gallery I trip, and I am disconcerted to see a person
within the gallery witness my stumble. Once in the however,
I realise the eyes belong to the painting of a young
girl and that I am surrounded by probing eyes.
The exhibition comprises fifteen
portraits, all hung at eye level in a white-box space.
The works themselves are painted on canvases, so the
portraits all appear cleanly and without distraction.
There are some echoes of Karen Kilimnik apparent here,
though without the sinister element that sometimes appears
in Kilimnik's work and that lends it an edge. The portraits
themselves are all of young girls, some seemingly familiar,
but perhaps the portraits are of the popular cultural
icons that we exposed to on such a regular basis that
they become familiar. Moving around the room I feel
the eyes of the girls on my back and for a moment nature
of observation is reversed and I feel myself to be the
focus.
However, after a brief time
I feel the work is exhausted. Despite the diversity
of the girls in the paintings, the eyes appear the same
in each work I feel I am looking at the same person
in different guises. There is a slightly formulaic feel
to the work and I find myself examining the works in
great detail to try to discern differences between the
portraits - is that chin different from the others?
are those eyebrows the same in each face?
The paintings are beautifully
executed and are very appealing, with a slightly dreamy
and wistful quality to them. In the end I get the feeling
that eyes, the most compelling aspect of the works,
are in fact a trick, an artifice; that the same eyes
are appearing in each portrait disguised by clothes,
eyeliners and faces. This seems borne out by the titles
which are generic, sugar-coated 1, sugar-coated
2, sugar-coated 3, etc. Is it the artist's
intention to imply that these girls (as in advertising)
are all interchangeable with little to differentiate
between them?
On the whole, while Gemma Browne
is certainly a talented painter and the work has a lovely
fragility to it, I feel she has not stretched sufficiently.
It will be interesting to see how her work develops
and what direction it takes from here.
Alexa Coyne is Visual
Arts Programmer of Contemporary Projects at City Arts
Centre, Dublin.
Gemma Browne: Sugar-coated,
Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin, January/February 200
Gemma Browne: from the series
Sugar-coated,2002,
acrylic on canvas, 30,5 x 25,5 cm each;
courtesy Kevin Kavanagh Gallery
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