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Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Chancery Lane, Dublin Until Dec 23 kevinkavanagh gallery.ie 01-4759514

Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Chancery Lane, Dublin Until Dec 23 kevinkavanagh gallery.ie 01-4759514

Two eyes, one image, and the two views are stitched together along a retinal seam from which Geraldine O’Neill’s new exhibition takes its title. O’Neill is well known as a painter of contemporary still life. Her technically polished work evokes the virtuosity of still-life painting of the Dutch golden age, while intensifying its subtext about transience and mortality. Flowers blossom, and they are captured in the fullness of blooming: images that anticipate their withering and decay.

O’Neill has emphasised vitality and consumption shadowed by death in this work focusing on the potent childish perception of mortality. As with classical still life, there’s a celebratory feeling to her paintings, which are brilliantly alive, even as they communicate an awareness of death. These are the two, complementary views joined intricately together in her engrossing images.

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Little Christmas Graphic Studio Gallery, Temple Bar, Dublin Until Jan 22

Aidan Dunne

Aidan Dunne

Aidan Dunne is a visual arts critic and contributor to The Irish Times