The show stands as the latest episode of the Avoidance—Avoidance (A Project of Transparency) project, conceived by Ash to be represented in different forms and venues. Started in December 2012, the project has already involved a number of international partners including Index—The Sweedish Centre for Contemporary Art, Stockholm; CAC Bretigny, Paris; Arnolfini, Bristol; the Museo Marino Marini, Florence; Mendes Wood, Sao Paolo and Steirischerherbst in Graz.
His new body of work is concerned with the relationship between control and abandon, subjecting images to a process of obliteration, in which representational pictorial information gives way to new abstract forms. Working from Gainsborough source images, the exhibition includes five paintings. Of these there are two pairs of paintings which, through a process of figurative and abstract experimentation, offer different iterations of the same image.
Ruairiadh O’Connell’s work investigates the psychological functions of design in all its manifestations, from abstract patterns through domestic interiors to landscape architecture. For this show, he has created paintings and sculptures, which transform the aesthetics of exclusion, isolation and distraction into thought-provoking forms that seem to belong in a parallel reality.