Janet Mullarney

This catalogue raisonne of the work of Irish artist Janet Mullarney showcases the diverse, innovative, personal and original nature of her work over the last 40 years. Mullarney, like James Joyce, realised the need to be an outsider. Since 1970 she based her art studio in Italy and then travelled further afield to include Mexico and India, learning about art and life in equal measure, filling notebooks with drawings that held meaning for her, and which influenced her work.

Provocatively, she embraces a marginal position between two countries and between art forms and practices: figurative, when the world craved abstraction; a carver when those skills were decried by the avant-garde; architectural and object-based, when sculpture seemed to be moving towards video and photography.

Ultimately her work is driven by a search for psychic freedom and balance. While the external targets of oppression are present and obvious, Mullarney’s work is focused on more self-imposed restraints.