Reviews of "Sins of the Flesh" Series in the 2012 Limerick School of Art and Design Graduate Show.
Exit Limerick 2012 invited critics/curators/artists to review EVA International's 2012 exhibition After the Future, the Limerick School of Art and Design's Fine Art graduate show and a number of EVA's fringe projects. My work was reviewed in conjunction with this and the reviews were subsequently published in a supplement in the Limerick Leader newspaper on June 14th 2012.
The space reviewed:
Review no.1 John Gayer
Lorraine Masters pairs her emotionally charged paintings with mirrors as a means of implicating the viewer n the work's psychological content. These sharply cropped and vilely hued images explore notions of self-image, desire, loss and shame. Each painting depicts a pair of women's hands either clutching her breasts or face. Whereas the mirrors placed above the breast pictures reveal the viewer's facial features, reflections of the viewer's body appear below the face pictures. The occurrence proves unsettling as these works force the viewer to consider his or her own experience. The intensity of the female subject's torment is lucid, not vitriolic.
Review no.2 Curt Riegeinegg
Lorraine Master's assembles painted canvas and mirror combinations in three distinct orientations. With their jaundiced skin tones and green-tinged fingertips, the body it renders looks bruised and ravaged. The mirrors are, presumably, meant to place us the viewers in the same state of victimisation or misuse, but the stenciled verse about shame and disguise tend to thwart the unity of the pieces. The manic, clutching hands and mottled flesh in the paintings is commanding enough, and the other aspects of the piece vie for the viewer's attention rather than buttressing the effect.