Marty Kelly
Aeroplanes, 2020
Acrylic, graphite, oil pastel, chalk pastel & charcoal on Arches HP archival watercolour paper
61 x 46 cm
24 1/8 x 18 1/8 in
24 1/8 x 18 1/8 in
Gibbons and Nicholas is pleased to present Marty Kelly’s AEROPLANES, an exhibition of new work. Within the show there is also an installation of small works on paper ‘Show me...
Gibbons and Nicholas is pleased to present Marty Kelly’s AEROPLANES, an exhibition of new work. Within the
show there is also an installation of small works on paper ‘Show me how to throw a wheel’, which has been
added to over the last three years, evolving from the themes of family, death, birth, home and life. This
exhibition is exemplary of Kelly’s sublime response to observations made from the world around him.
His internalised, cross-referencing inspiration is emphatic across the exhibition. It is visible through the layered
re-working, the mixed marks of pastel, charcoal, paint and fingerprints and also the convalescent scraping,
rubbing and buffing. Kelly does not use models for his work, they are often made from spending time with
people. These pieces are a sort of trans generational portrait of fleeting moments of profound significance. The
intersection between recent memory and memory flashes of his childhood, the children now and his parents as
children. Kelly’s previous work has been greatly informed by his response to media coverage of migrant events
and his time spent with asylum seekers in the UK and Calais. Within his 2011 exhibition ‘Lesser known birds of
paradise’ the work focused on the faces of the people he connected with. In 2019, ‘There’ll be no bloody
bluebirds’ at VUE in the Royal Hibernian Association Gallery, depicting crude figures and allegorical birds, was
also informed by the European migrant crisis. The reverberations of the artist’s experiences were clear in both.
For this newest body of work, created within the context of a tumultuous 2020, Kelly has retreated to a subject
matter less blatantly evocative, less conspicuous, more every day. This adaption has allowed the exhibition to
explore a truly euphonious form of expression and subsequently, the work has become more harmonious in its
consideration of the human condition. Kelly has succeeded in bringing his practice closer to the output and
process of poetry. The silver faces and enigmatic sketches are subtly industrious in their ongoing consideration
and observation of the human experience within this new context. The intimation they produce is poetical and
mellifluous. The ethics of activism exist within the work, but rather than oration it is more akin to a lyrical
persuasion towards understanding and empathy.
Carrying on his exploration of identity and connection as in the earlier practice, this new series continues to
emit a celebration of individual and communal bravery. It ameliorates the status of its subjects through
recognition in paint. Working in North West Ireland, from his hometown, now he explores the more obscure
challenges of being human. The delicacies of everyday life and the bravery in the daily challenges of being alive.
Like poetry, the meaning is enigmatic rather than concise, it is diffused through the mood, tone, inclination and
rhythm of the work. This exhibition is celebratory of ordinary people and their connections with each other. He
demonstrates a subtle sensitivity to the human experience which materialises in a delicate, ephemeral and calm
manner. There is acquiescence of the reality of human life on all levels and a perceptive, shrewd awareness that
each individual’s lived reality deserves celebration, respect and connection. The bleak beauty, the simple lines,
the austere palette and the candid shapes celebrate a strength in the mundane. There is a stoicism in the
characters as they represent the survival of everyday, they personify Eavan Boland’s ‘Habitual Grief.’ Whether
asylum seeker or Donegal child, we all have our own battles, and this is the essence of human nature, of
knowing, of loving, of sharing and feeling.
Kelly’s figures have always carried the enchantment of Donegal’s northerly tenor, the bleak Irish beauty and the
poignancy of Ireland’s cultural pathetic fallacy. These latest works, produced in that very place, maintain some
of the mournful, misty colour palette of West Donegal. The plaintive countenance in the work has an
incandescent beauty. Particularly in the pieces like ‘Black Swan’ and ‘Birdhouse’, where you can see the
thickness in the air, laden with moisture, sodden with the heavy dampness of the west coast. Again, it harks to
the words of Boland, “…we love the fog because it shifts old anomalies into the elements surrounding it, it gives
relief from a way of seeing,” Kelly’s work too affords us this new way of seeing. There is something of elegy
within the faces, like a visual lament. They are hauntingly nostalgic of Irish folklore, the mystical stories told with
the purpose of justifying and explaining human condition and its connection to the natural world. Pieces such as
‘Mountain Folk’ and ‘King and Queen’ appear like a pictorial Keening - an atonal array of primitive sounds sung
for lost souls and sorrow - often mentioned in Irish literature. However, the recognition of sadness and
melancholy are not intended in a negative sense, but as tools for appreciating the small idiosyncrasies of life.
There is joy in the work, both in its beauty and its playfulness, but also in the twinkling motives of golden
crowns, a ruby red sky, or the efflorescent glow of a crescent moon. In these intricate moments the work
embraces and cherishes the medial commonalities of human life, tracing them, through art, to create
connections. Although we are all faced with overarching ideologies and global circumstances, it is important to
remember and celebrate the inner details that entangle our individual lives, moments of joy, familiarity or
mortality. It is within Kelly’s ability to identify these shared treasures that we feel the interconnection to his
previous oeuvre with asylum seekers as subject. Kelly’s work removes status and circumstance from his
characters. He illuminates them as people, as human, elevating them from their pre-existent epithet.
Kelly works in a way that is uninhibited and idiosyncratic, his materials range from mixed media, on panel or
canvas to expressive painting in oil and the dynamic drawing of lines, patterns, creatures and figures in crayon
and pencil. Like the work of Rose Wylie and those who pushed away from figurative realism before (the
illustrations of Philip Guston and Georg Baselitz come to mind), Kelly’s work employs a graphic simplicity. There
is a confidence gained through his informed contextualisation within Art History and Kelly is comfortable in the
crudeness of his depictions. Like those before, there is an active move away from painting what you are looking
at; Kelly is painting who you are looking at. This ultimately delivers something much more acutely observed.
Rose Wylie, an inspiration for Kelly, has spoken of letting the dust settle, there is something of this in his finished
pieces and within his process of reworking, revisiting, pause and redaction. The work invites you to sit with
something for a while, as the artist has done, to not rush past or rush on with life, to take the time to make a
connection to the see below the surface or the overarching appearance and to find a deeper meaning and
connection beneath.
By Pamela Lee
show there is also an installation of small works on paper ‘Show me how to throw a wheel’, which has been
added to over the last three years, evolving from the themes of family, death, birth, home and life. This
exhibition is exemplary of Kelly’s sublime response to observations made from the world around him.
His internalised, cross-referencing inspiration is emphatic across the exhibition. It is visible through the layered
re-working, the mixed marks of pastel, charcoal, paint and fingerprints and also the convalescent scraping,
rubbing and buffing. Kelly does not use models for his work, they are often made from spending time with
people. These pieces are a sort of trans generational portrait of fleeting moments of profound significance. The
intersection between recent memory and memory flashes of his childhood, the children now and his parents as
children. Kelly’s previous work has been greatly informed by his response to media coverage of migrant events
and his time spent with asylum seekers in the UK and Calais. Within his 2011 exhibition ‘Lesser known birds of
paradise’ the work focused on the faces of the people he connected with. In 2019, ‘There’ll be no bloody
bluebirds’ at VUE in the Royal Hibernian Association Gallery, depicting crude figures and allegorical birds, was
also informed by the European migrant crisis. The reverberations of the artist’s experiences were clear in both.
For this newest body of work, created within the context of a tumultuous 2020, Kelly has retreated to a subject
matter less blatantly evocative, less conspicuous, more every day. This adaption has allowed the exhibition to
explore a truly euphonious form of expression and subsequently, the work has become more harmonious in its
consideration of the human condition. Kelly has succeeded in bringing his practice closer to the output and
process of poetry. The silver faces and enigmatic sketches are subtly industrious in their ongoing consideration
and observation of the human experience within this new context. The intimation they produce is poetical and
mellifluous. The ethics of activism exist within the work, but rather than oration it is more akin to a lyrical
persuasion towards understanding and empathy.
Carrying on his exploration of identity and connection as in the earlier practice, this new series continues to
emit a celebration of individual and communal bravery. It ameliorates the status of its subjects through
recognition in paint. Working in North West Ireland, from his hometown, now he explores the more obscure
challenges of being human. The delicacies of everyday life and the bravery in the daily challenges of being alive.
Like poetry, the meaning is enigmatic rather than concise, it is diffused through the mood, tone, inclination and
rhythm of the work. This exhibition is celebratory of ordinary people and their connections with each other. He
demonstrates a subtle sensitivity to the human experience which materialises in a delicate, ephemeral and calm
manner. There is acquiescence of the reality of human life on all levels and a perceptive, shrewd awareness that
each individual’s lived reality deserves celebration, respect and connection. The bleak beauty, the simple lines,
the austere palette and the candid shapes celebrate a strength in the mundane. There is a stoicism in the
characters as they represent the survival of everyday, they personify Eavan Boland’s ‘Habitual Grief.’ Whether
asylum seeker or Donegal child, we all have our own battles, and this is the essence of human nature, of
knowing, of loving, of sharing and feeling.
Kelly’s figures have always carried the enchantment of Donegal’s northerly tenor, the bleak Irish beauty and the
poignancy of Ireland’s cultural pathetic fallacy. These latest works, produced in that very place, maintain some
of the mournful, misty colour palette of West Donegal. The plaintive countenance in the work has an
incandescent beauty. Particularly in the pieces like ‘Black Swan’ and ‘Birdhouse’, where you can see the
thickness in the air, laden with moisture, sodden with the heavy dampness of the west coast. Again, it harks to
the words of Boland, “…we love the fog because it shifts old anomalies into the elements surrounding it, it gives
relief from a way of seeing,” Kelly’s work too affords us this new way of seeing. There is something of elegy
within the faces, like a visual lament. They are hauntingly nostalgic of Irish folklore, the mystical stories told with
the purpose of justifying and explaining human condition and its connection to the natural world. Pieces such as
‘Mountain Folk’ and ‘King and Queen’ appear like a pictorial Keening - an atonal array of primitive sounds sung
for lost souls and sorrow - often mentioned in Irish literature. However, the recognition of sadness and
melancholy are not intended in a negative sense, but as tools for appreciating the small idiosyncrasies of life.
There is joy in the work, both in its beauty and its playfulness, but also in the twinkling motives of golden
crowns, a ruby red sky, or the efflorescent glow of a crescent moon. In these intricate moments the work
embraces and cherishes the medial commonalities of human life, tracing them, through art, to create
connections. Although we are all faced with overarching ideologies and global circumstances, it is important to
remember and celebrate the inner details that entangle our individual lives, moments of joy, familiarity or
mortality. It is within Kelly’s ability to identify these shared treasures that we feel the interconnection to his
previous oeuvre with asylum seekers as subject. Kelly’s work removes status and circumstance from his
characters. He illuminates them as people, as human, elevating them from their pre-existent epithet.
Kelly works in a way that is uninhibited and idiosyncratic, his materials range from mixed media, on panel or
canvas to expressive painting in oil and the dynamic drawing of lines, patterns, creatures and figures in crayon
and pencil. Like the work of Rose Wylie and those who pushed away from figurative realism before (the
illustrations of Philip Guston and Georg Baselitz come to mind), Kelly’s work employs a graphic simplicity. There
is a confidence gained through his informed contextualisation within Art History and Kelly is comfortable in the
crudeness of his depictions. Like those before, there is an active move away from painting what you are looking
at; Kelly is painting who you are looking at. This ultimately delivers something much more acutely observed.
Rose Wylie, an inspiration for Kelly, has spoken of letting the dust settle, there is something of this in his finished
pieces and within his process of reworking, revisiting, pause and redaction. The work invites you to sit with
something for a while, as the artist has done, to not rush past or rush on with life, to take the time to make a
connection to the see below the surface or the overarching appearance and to find a deeper meaning and
connection beneath.
By Pamela Lee