Damien Flood and James Merrigan

Talking in Brackets: Research and Reaction in Painting

Saturday, November 26 at 1.15pm


Green On Red Gallery
Park Lane
Spencer Dock ( Luas Stop to Rear of Apartments )
Dublin 1

On the penultimate day of Damien Flood's current exhibition at Green on Red Gallery, and almost three years on from their legendary discussion 'Painting in Parentheses (In Brackets!)', Damien Flood and James Merrigan return to the gallery to critically discuss Flood's current work and critically explore painting practice in general. 

The hook for the last discussion was: painting can no longer be just painting anymore, it also has to be an Idea, or at the very least, dress itself in an Idea. The hook for this discussion is: what is the difference between a painting born of research and a painting born of instinct? 

In this discussion we want to explore how research affects painting and the painter, from its compulsory adoption in art college to its necessary adaptation in the studio after art college. In the case of Flood's emotionally and physically reactive painting process, is research a lie, a mask, a case of painting fitting into a conceptual context that is "no longer its own"? Is painting's context instinctual rather than intellectual? Or does reactionary painting stem from research? When it comes to being a painter, are intellect and instinct two sides of a tossed coin? 

What complicates things further is, research and reaction also come into play in the verbal reception of painting, whether casually in spoken word or carefully in the written review. How do 'you' talk and think about painting? Do you embrace painting at the base level of the medium or the elevated stage of the message? Is painting just for painters, and for painters to discuss alone? If so, how do painters deal with the inadequate response, and in most cases, the silent reaction?

Like last time around we ask you to come armed with your own opinions and questions, because like you, we are looking for answers to the questions posed, and in some ideal cases, solutions. 

James Merrigan is an artist turned art critic. He has written for many art periodicals, art institutions and artist catalogues, but his role as art critic at billionjournal.com is where he has found the freedom to play with a more visceral, confessional, fun and sometimes polemical art criticism. Merrigan was selected for EVA International Biennale of Visual Art (2014) as a fugitive art critic; he was co-editor of the printed quarterly on Irish art, Fugitive Papers; and was Guest Editor of two issues of Visual Artists’ News Sheet in 2016. Current projects include DEEP-SEATED which takes as its starting point the psychoanalytic promotion of the ‘talking cure’; and All or Nothing, a film that looks at the current landscape of Irish painting told through his eyes as a lapsed painter. Most recently he was invited to curate PERIPHERIES 2017 at Gorey School of Art. He is co-ordinator and lecturer for the MPhil module Psychoanalysis and Art at Trinity College Dublin, and a tutor at Gorey School of Art. A collection of his art criticism was published in 2013 entitled Agents of Subjectivism.