CAG.3253 Kevin Mooney, Storyteller, 2016, oil on canvas, 80 x 60 cm. Purchased, the Artist and Hillsboro Fine Art, 2023. © the Artist.

WORK OF THE WEEK!

Storyteller (2016) by Kevin Mooney is one of 75 works from the Collection currently featured in ALL EYES ON US.

Newly acquired earlier this year, it is a portrait of sorts that both acknowledges an oral tradition and alludes to a seanchaí (storyteller) whose work shadowed many a secondary school experience.

Employing a palette of earth tones, Mooney describes a figure – with two long clay pipes, puffs of smoke, shawl, and hair parted at its centre – staring at the viewer through seemingly floating eyeballs. Could this be Peig Sayers (1873-1958)?

Picking through embellished accounts and unreliable speculations on pagan parties and tribal conflicts, on seers and magical shaman, Mooney imagines a ‘speculative art history’ through Storyteller.

The artist’s reading of mythology and history is layered, however, and he identifies how ‘the Irish’ are not a homogenous group, but comprise of different cultures and social strata that are carried throughout his current practice. In essence, Storyteller brings into being the ‘lost’ art of an Irish diaspora.

Kevin Mooney (b.1973) is a visual artist based in Cork and a member of Sample-Studios. His recent exhibitions include Pine’s Eye at the Talbot Rice Gallery (Edinburgh), 38^th EVA International (Limerick), Mutators at St Luke’s Crypt (Cork) and MART Gallery (Dublin), and Revenants at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA).

Storyteller (2016) by Kevin Mooney is featured in ALL EYES ON US until 24 March.

The Arts House: Conor Tallon chats with curator Michael Waldron about a work from the Collection every Sunday morning on Cork’s 96FM and C103 Cork. 

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