Mairead O’hEocha; Extra Alphabets
Sat. 5 Jul. – Sat. 20 Sep. 2025

Curated by Michael Hill

Mairead O’hEocha’s recent paintings cast an array of extraordinary and everyday tabletop scenes that float in and out from the facts and furnishings of their surrounds: birds invade a garden lunch, an octopus coils its tentacles in a trophy room, a fake loaf of bread sits solemnly at the tenement museum; a blizzard is observed from the comfort of a home workspace.

O’hEocha’s paintings consolidate a variety of recurring themes: how to depict ‘the natural world’ and our relationship with it, sensory encounters and digital space. Extra Alphabets is the largest gathering of O’hEocha’s work in an exhibition to date. The focus is on a group of new large-scale oil paintings, with a number of unseen works, plus a selection from international exhibitions, adding to this overview of the artist’s practice. The exhibition also includes painted interventions that charge the gallery’s walls, bringing O’hEocha’s work into close conversation with The Model's unique architecture. These painted elements play with the perimeters of the exhibition space, so the cabinets, windows, animals, glass objects, tables and their horizon lines – O’hEocha's register of motifs – expand, absorb and reflect her approach to painting, and its forms of display.

Artist Talk
Sat. 5 Jul. 3pm

At the opening of the exhibition Ben Eastham will talk to Mairead O’hEocha about her work.

Ben Eastham is a writer and editor based in Rome and London. He is editor-in-chief of e-flux Criticism and co-founder of The White Review. His second book, The Imaginary Museum, was published in September 2020; his debut novel, The Floating World, is forthcoming with Fitzcarraldo Editions.

Artist Biography

Mairead O’hEocha’s solo exhibitions include Internationales Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia, Bamberg (2025); P420, Bologna (2023); mother’s tankstation London (2023, 2018); Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin (2020); mother’s tankstation Dublin (2016, 2012); The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2014, 2011), Butler Gallery, Kilkenny (2011). Her work has been represented in a number of international group exhibitions and publications that have explored contemporary painting practices, including Slow Painting (curated by Gilly Fox and Martin Herbert), Hayward Gallery Touring Programme, UK (2019-2020), 6th Biennial of Painting HDLU, Zagreb (2021), Salzberger Kunstverein (2017), and Vitamin P3: New Perspectives in Painting (published by Phaidon, 2016). O’hEocha’s work is included in the collections of Irish Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery of Ireland, Hugh Lane Gallery, Trinity College Dublin, Arts Council of Ireland, Office of Public Works, AMC Collezione Coppola. Recent residencies include Moly-Sabata / Fondation Albert Gleizes, Sablons (2025); Internationale Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia, Bamberg (2024); Cité internationale des arts, Paris (2023); BigCi, Sydney (2016).

www.maireadoheocha.com

Michael Hill is Programme Curator at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin, and one half of the curatorial team (with Clíodhna Shaffrey) that represented Ireland at the 59th Venice Biennale 2022, and Irish Tour 2023.

www.100yrsagotoday.com

Sponsors

This exhibition is funded by an Arts Council Project Award.

       

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