On the Town: With tongue firmly in cheek, James Hanley RHA, brought friends from drawing to drawing at his new show in the Ashford Gallery at the Royal Hibernian Academy.
"I just gently mock or poke fun at the statues, at their pomp and bombast. We've forgotten what they're commemorating. I look at them with gentle ribbing," he said, pointing to the strategically painted red sports bra on a fine drawing of a classical huntress with her spear.
"It's very subversive; the humour is in all of them," said solicitor Bernard O'Neill. Producer and author Peter Blackbyrne especially loved Trapeze, because of the interplay between the sexes.
Architect Arthur Gibney, president of the Royal Hibernian Academy, said Hanley "epitomises the academy's ideal of drawing and he's added a further layer with his sense of humour". National College of Art and Design director Colm Ó Briain said the irreverent details in the drawings were "small interventions and yet he takes ownership of them".
Moving Statues is at the Ashford Gallery, 15 Ely Place, Dublin 2, until Thur, Aug 25