Open 10:30–5:00, Tuesday – Saturday
This two person exhibition by Irish and UK painters Alexis Harding and Emma Roche connects around their material concerns and innovative practice where control & chance are central.
Everyday disruptions and a fraught relationship with time inform Emma Roche’s paintings. Materials and imagery become inseparable; the artist is drawn to the fluid qualities of paint, its ability to mimic everyday liquids, the grotesque and, in turn, the human condition.
The process is central to the work: long lines of paint are squeezed through a syringe and left to dry. Once dry, the paint is used like wool or thread and woven or knitted together to make the painting. Drawings on graph paper are used as patterns/craft charts to work from – each square signifies a stitch to build the image.
Alexis Harding’s practice explores and celebrates the intersections between abstraction and representation. In its use of painterly time-based material and the reinvention and appropriation of various organising principles, it has sought out new areas for painting.
In his practice each work is subjected to a specific painterly behavior where he is able able to slow the making of a painting right down and then make incredibly quick decisions within this durational time-span. The long drying time allows ideas and the world IN.
The title of the show is a neat communion. Harding uses literal gutters to catch his paint as it falls, or to direct paint where he wants it to go. Guttering is also a term in knitting when there are gaps on the wrong side of stockinette due to bad tensioning. Habits are things artists do for their entire lives. Habits make up an art practice. But habits are also worn by nuns, which opens up another inquiry into the content of this show and its staging.
Gabrielle de la Puente, 2025
ABOUT
Emma Roche lives and works in Wexford. She was an Artist in Residence at the Sam and Adele Golden Foundation, New York, 2023 and was awarded the inaugural Lady Grantchester Prize as part of the John Moore’s Painting Prize, Liverpool, 2023. She received the EMERGENCE Award from Wexford Arts Centre, 2021-2023. Her work is in private and public collections, and she is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, 2024 and Culture Ireland, 2025.
Upcoming shows include a group presentation at Felix, LA and a solo booth at ARCO, Madrid, 2025.
The artist is represented by Brigitte Mulholland, Paris.
