The Widening Gyre [Solo Presentation]

On the occasion of this exhibition, the launch of which marks the centenary of the publication of W.B Yeats’ poem 'The Second Coming' published November 1920, McKeown takes as her point of departure, images of ‘Woman’ as she is encoded historically in Irish visual culture. Many of the paintings draw inspiration from iconic stamps produced during the 1940s to promote the ‘Irish Hospital Sweepstakes’, a lottery founded as a means to finance the newly independent state’s national hospitals. The ‘Sweepstake’ portraits depict young women in Celtic costume, modelling goddesses and prominent female figures from early Irish mythology. Deploying painting techniques most readily associated with surrealist automatism, such as pliage (folding) and decalcomania (transfer), McKeown entrusts capricious forces of chance with a pivotal role in the work’s formation by applying the rorshach technique.