The Glutted Look of Clouds

'There is always a puzzle when family mythology and social history collide. Stories are told and retold. One's sense of self shifts. These new works deal with that slippage - where image, idea and medium begin to collapse. Half-formed identities emerge, ghosts seeking reparation. They occupy spaces which are tenuous, overgrown and full of rain'.Wallace’s new paintings are concerned with the poetic rather than narrative. To this end the artist has referenced the work of Belfast poets Sinead Morrisey and Medbh McGuckian. The title of the solo exhibition (held at the Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast) is inspired by Morrisey’s poem ‘Through the Square Window’ which won the T. S. Eliot prize in 2013. As in Morissey’s work, Wallace’s paintings deal with maternal dreaming and dread. The imagery is often haunted by the figure of a child – but that figure is unnatural or distorted. The paintings are full of local history, landscape and custom. It is important to the artist that the work has a fully realized sense of place. So for example a painting such as ‘Burning the Whin’ is informed by the tradition of burning gorse across the Belfast mountains to control its propagation. Wallace has also stated that these works are ‘full of weather’ – rain in particular.