GALLERY 2
HOPE AND LOSS – BETH LEAHY
30 AUGUST – 22 NOVEMBER
Hope and Loss is a solo exhibition by painter Beth Leahy that explores the process of working through thoughts and feelings with portraiture.
In a collection of paintings that create a timeline of different moments in her life, Hope and Loss shows the impact of numerous destabilising life events on Beth’s use of colour, application of paint, and in the expressions of her subjects.
Strangers blur with friends and family as AI is intermingled with reality. Confrontational faces filled with bright colours sit beside those with distant expressions and muted palettes. These contrasting portraits create the unsettling feeling of being watched or seen from all angles.
Moving from work that explored the outer world, and the changing ways we interact with art and each other, to paintings that look inward, to the ways we process emotions, Beth explores her changing relationship to painting, as it became a way to stay present through uncertainty.
Through somewhat autobiographical work that has been influenced by the breakdown of a marriage, family bereavement, health scares, and being made redundant, Beth’s deeply personal and raw work acts as a testament to getting through difficult times.
Beth was part of Portal, our annual graduate show in 2022, this exhibition presents a collection of work that looks back and forwards, bringing work made at different stages of her life and career together.
There will be an opening in the gallery on Saturday 30 August, 12-2pm, and the exhibition will run until the 22 November.
