Clúdach / Cover

Abstract

Clúdach / Cover Angela Griffith Click for larger view View full resolution Cover. The cover image is from a series of prints produced by the Northern Irish artist Mark Francis (b. 1962). The cover image is from a series of prints produced by the Northern Irish artist Mark Francis (b. 1962). This new body of work has been made in collaboration with the Graphic Studio Dublin and will be exhibited in the Graphic Studio Gallery in June 2020. The GSD has a long tradition of working with artists primarily known for media other than print. These partnerships have led to the creation of some of the most experimental and dynamic image-making produced at the studio. Looking at a Francis composition one recognizes a modernist concern for structural abstraction, elements presented in grid forms, an imposed order, yet one that is not geometrically rigid but constructed intuitively. Painterly manipulations of media offset any initial mathematical imposition; ink is layered, edges are blurred and allowed to bleed, presenting discombobulating optical effects. Compositional order is in fact a barely contained state of flux. Francis presents the dichotomies of life in visual form. His work is at once about order and disorder. The sources for his abstractions are readable as scientific—they range from the microscopic, in his imaginings of biological cellular structures, to the macro, including mapping, global communication systems, sound and light waves. These systems can be represented as a constant universal grid, but one that fluctuates, responds and reacts, from within and without. Work from this series has been acquired by the British Museum. Francis's work is held in national and international collections including the Irish Museum of Modern Art; the Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane; TATE, London; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Museum of Modern Art, Miami. He is represented by the Kerlin Gallery, Dublin. [End Page 159] Angela Griffith Trinity College Dublin Copyright © 2020 The University of St. Thomas