Grace Brennan’s predominantly painting-based practice centres on investigating the division and disparity between urban and rural life in Ireland, calling into question the traditions, attitudes and perspectives surrounding rural communities.
Previous work looks at the aesthetics of Irish boglands with particular interest in how the landscape holds onto the trauma of its past.Often using bright and seemingly unnatural colours to depict the ordinarily dull scenes. These paintings possess an impermanent, ephemeral quality and evoke a visceral response. Teetering between abstract and representative, your eyes travel across and through her paintings to suck you into the landscape.
While Grace Brennan is a Dublin based painter, the perspectives demonstrated within her wider practice are informed by her childhood in rural Ireland and her connection to the ideas of home, trauma and identity.
Exhibitions
FLUX Members’ Showcase Exhibition, ‘The Bank’, The Digital Hub Dublin, May 2023
Souvenirs From The Flatlands , Old Providers Building, LongfordTown, Nov 2022
All Fools , Block T Studios, Dublin, 2022
Touch Base , Fegans 1924, Dublin, 2022
2021 Culture Night Exhibition, Block T Studios, Dublin.
2020 NCAD Works, Graduate Exhibition, online.
Cahoots , Inspire Gallery, Dublin, 2019
Topophilia , The Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin, 2019
Press / Bibliography
2020 Introducing Grace Brennan, interview with Ciara Dwyer for theSunday Independent's Life Magazine.
Introducing artist Grace Brennan - Independent.ie
NCAD Online Graduate Catalogue. Grace Brennan | NCAD Works Showcase: NCAD moves its creative works online. Showcase: NCAD moves its creative works online - Independent.ie
2018 Topophilia by Aisling Ni Aodh.