Janet Mullarney

Description

This catalogue raisonné of the work of Irish artist Janet Mullarney showcases the diverse, innovative, personal and original nature of her work over the last 40 years.

Mullarney, like James Joyce, realised the need to be an outsider. Since 1970 she based her art studio in Italy and then travelled further afield to include Mexico and India, learning about art and life in equal measure, filling notebooks with drawings that held meaning for her, and which influenced her work.

Provocatively, she embraced a marginal position between two countries and between art forms and practices: figurative, when the world craved abstraction; a carver when those skills were decried by the avant-garde; architectural and object-based, when sculpture seemed to be moving towards video and photography.

Ultimately her work was driven by a search for psychic freedom and balance. While the external targets of oppression are present and obvious, Mullarney’s work focuses on more self-imposed restraints.

Table of Contents

Artist’s note
Foreword by the editors, Catherine Marshall and Mary Ryder

Essays
All the Stances of Shyness: Catherine Marshall
Entre chien et loup: Declan McGonagle
Second Self / Affinity: Mary Ryder
In the silence of the early afternoon: Nataly Maier
The union between art and architecture: Adolfo Natalini
Through the wardrobe to Cherry Orchard: Sheila O’Donnell
Human animal tribe: Alice Maher
Serious but not hopeless, we hope: John Tuomey
Janet’s Garden: Dino Carini
Janet’s ‘I’ / Eye: Arabella Natalini & Stefano Velotti
Paysages de Phantasie: Pier Luigi Tazzi

Archive 1962-2019
Biography, exhibitions & select biography
Abbreviations
Photographers
Patrons & Donors
Artist’s thanks

About the Artist

Dublin-born artist Janet Mullarney (1952-2020) divided her time between Ireland and Italy. Largely self-taught, she attended the Accademia di Belle Arti, and Scuola Professionale di Intaglio, in Florence. She exhibited extensively in Ireland, Mexico, Italy, China, and the USA. She won many awards, including the Pollock Krasner, the RHA Sculpture Award, the RUA Perpetual Silver Medal and the O’Malley Irish American Cultural award. Her work is held in many public and private collections throughout the world and was among the first tranche of artwork purchased for collection of the newly established Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) in 1992. Mullarney was elected a member of Aosdána in 1999.

About the Editors

Curator and Art Historian, Catherine Marshall was Founding Head of Collections at the Irish Museum of Modern Art and co-editor of The Art and Architecture of Ireland, Vol V, Twentieth Century, Yale, London and Dublin, 2014.

Close friend, art lover and political activist, Mary Ryder has particularly supported Janet Mullarney throughout her career.