Familiar II

Artist Alice Maher (b. Cahir, 1956)

Date1994

MediumOil and acrylic on canvas; bronze

Dimensions245.5 x 141.5 x 6 cm

ClassificationsMixed Media

Credit LineCollection & image © Hugh Lane Gallery. Donated by DHL, 1996. © Alice Maher.

Object number1888

DescriptionFollowing her studies in Limerick, Alice Maher attended the Crawford College of Art from 1981-5 and gained her MA in Fine Art from the University of Ulster in 1986. As a Fullbright scholar she completed a postgraduate fellowship in painting at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1986-7 and in 1994 she represented Ireland at the Sao Paulo Biennal. Maher's imaginative transformation of objects from real life - bees, berries or hair for example - invests her pieces with richly diverse layers of meaning, which articulate her own personal mythology and childhood memories or engage with art historical or cultural references. Maher has spoken of the lack of seeing which can sometimes occur through over-familiarization and her working process encourages the distillation of thought through deliberate repetition.

Familiar II combines both painting and sculpture and plays with the viewer's perception of objects seen from afar and up-close. A bronze head of a sleeping girl, situated some distance away and miniscule by comparison, points in the direction of a large painting depicting disjointed labyrinthine hedges with emphatic three-dimensionality. While the painting could be seen to visualise the interior universe of the bronze head's psyche, the pairing also raises questions regarding the delineation of spatial boundaries. (JO'D)

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