Coloured by Weather – Exhibition, Custom House Gallery, Mayo
Photos by Colin Carters
PRESS RELEASE: March 2024
Coloured by Weather is an exhibition of new work by visual artist Orla Whelan. The exhibition title borrows its name from the final chapter in the 2009 book ‘What Colour Is the Sacred? in which anthropologist Michael Taussig considers the Western world’s complicated relationship to colour, and how this relationship has been explored through literature and philosophy. Outlining the history of commercial colour production from colonial plantations to chemical factories, and its impact on our societies, the environment and our imaginations, Taussig suggests we have an ‘unconscious engagement with the colour world, to which our bodies even more than our eyes are connected.’
Whelan’s interest in the implicit connections carried by colour has underpinned her painting practice for many years. In particular, the entangled relationship between language, perception and place in the experience of colour. Employing the formal language of abstraction, she intuitively experiments with combinations of hue, tone and form, in an attempt to invoke visual connections from the local to the cosmic, and from the material to the metaphysical. Coloured by Weather includes Earthshine – a new series of large paintings developed for this exhibition, smaller paintings from the artist’s Moon, Valley, Dew, Death series and a creative response by the poet Rana Howell.