In a small white-walled gallery near Dublin's Rotunda, London-based artist Helen A Pritchard has gathered sculptures, assemblages, and paintings that ask what everyday objects become when placed in the care of a rigorous and playful eye. Her solo exhibition at The Horse gallery — itself marking five years of championing experimental work — transforms toilet ducks, ice-cream scoops, and pool balls into formal inquiries about scale, humor, and the nature of monuments. It is a show that reminds us how much artistic intelligence can be hidden inside the ordinary, waiting only for the right kind of
Helen A Pritchard's Dublin debut balances playful wit with compositional rigor
Materials guide the work; formal rigor emerges from attentiveness
Mark
What's the actual draw here? Is this an exhibition that works because the artist is clever, or because the work is formally strong?
Mimi
Both, but not in equal measure. The cleverness—the toilet duck, the ice-cream scoops—that's the entry point. But what keeps you looking is the composition. Pritchard understands proportion in a way that feels almost classical.
Luke
The review compares her to Franz West and Al Taylor. How much of that is earned, and how much is just the critic reaching for a frame?
Mimi
The comparisons are apt in tone and material sensibility, but Pritchard's work feels more restrained, more formally deliberate. West was more anarchic.
Mark
So the public sculpture proposals—are those meant to be built, or are they conceptual?
Mimi
The review doesn't specify, but the language suggests they're investigations of scale and monumentality rather than blueprints. They're proposals in the sense of "what if we thought about this differently."
Luke
The paintings get a paragraph at the end. Are they the strongest work, or just the clearest demonstration of her compositional thinking?
Mimi
They're the clearest demonstration. But that doesn't mean they're the strongest. The sculptures have more presence, more material weight.
Mark
What does the Barry Flanagan connection add to the work?
Mimi
It's not just a residency credit. She's using materials from his studio. There's a lineage being claimed—or at least acknowledged—between her practice and his.
Luke
But the review doesn't say what Flanagan's work was actually about, so readers don't know if that lineage is meaningful or just a fact.
Mimi
Fair point. The connection is there, but it's not explained. You'd need to know Flanagan's work to feel the weight of it.
O Pulso
- Pritchard arrives at The Horse gallery with work that refuses to settle — moving restlessly between sculpture, assemblage, and painting without ever losing its compositional footing.
- Found objects like toilet ducks and aluminum ice-cream scoops carry the tension of the absurd pressed up against genuine formal ambition, threatening at any moment to tip into parody.
- Three public sculpture proposals push the stakes higher, staging miniature human figures beneath postapocalyptic landmarks and ice-cream scoops that parody Soviet modernist grandeur.
- The humor never capsizes the work — instead, a sure sense of proportion and balance holds everything in place, the way a tightrope walker makes difficulty look inevitable.
- The exhibition lands as a confident statement of artistic maturity: playfulness and rigor not in opposition, but in productive, energizing conversation.
In a small white-walled gallery near Dublin's Rotunda, London-based artist Helen A Pritchard has gathered sculptures, assemblages, and paintings that ask what everyday objects become when placed in the care of a rigorous and playful eye. Her solo exhibition at The Horse gallery — itself marking five years of championing experimental work — transforms toilet ducks, ice-cream scoops, and pool balls into formal inquiries about scale, humor, and the nature of monuments. It is a show that reminds us how much artistic intelligence can be hidden inside the ordinary, waiting only for the right kind of attention.
The Horse gallery, a spare white-walled space near Dublin's Rotunda, is marking five years of operation with a solo exhibition by London-based artist Helen A Pritchard — and the pairing feels well-matched. The gallery's openness invites experimentation, and Pritchard's work arrives ready to take full advantage.
The pieces move fluidly between sculpture, assemblage, and painting, built from materials chosen as much for their everyday strangeness as for their formal properties. A small 2015 canvas embeds a real metal ashtray cover into an abstracted field of red and blue, a cigarette butt resting inside it like a mouth, a punched hole above distorting the composition into something resembling a lo-fi cubist portrait. Elsewhere, a black amorphous sculpture incorporates a toilet duck tilted atop a roughly gessoed wooden shelf. Several titles bear an asterisk and initials pointing to Barry Flanagan's studio, where Pritchard recently completed a residency and sourced materials.
The formal references are recognizable — rope-and-rebar arrangements that echo Al Taylor, papier-mâché energies that recall Franz West — yet nothing feels derivative. The most absorbing works are three public sculpture proposals that play seriously with scale and ambition. Three aluminum ice-cream scoops cradling a ball of yarn hover between folly and monument, gently mocking Soviet modernist grandeur. In another piece, miniature human figurines stand beneath a vertical assemblage of wood, silver leaf, and a pool ball, like tiny tourists at some postapocalyptic landmark.
The humor throughout is genuine but never overwhelming. Pritchard's paintings punctuate the show with color and line that recall early minimalism while insisting, like the work of Matt Connors or Fergus Feehily, on their own three-dimensionality. The overall impression is of an artist who trusts attentiveness over predetermined plan — allowing a toilet duck or a pool ball to lead toward formal rigor rather than imposing it from above. The result is lively, engaging, and quietly enduring.
The Horse gallery, a modest white-walled space wedged down a side street near Dublin's Rotunda, is celebrating five years in operation with an exhibition by London-based artist Helen A Pritchard. The gallery itself—spare, interrupted only by a bright-yellow staircase—has the feel of a place that invites experimentation, and Pritchard's show makes full use of that openness.
The work on display moves fluidly between sculpture, assemblage, and painting, each piece built from materials that seem chosen as much for their everyday strangeness as for their formal properties. A Painting About Something Smoking, a small canvas from 2015, sits behind glass with an actual metal ashtray cover embedded in an abstracted field of burnished red and blue. A cigarette butt rests inside it like a mouth; a hole punched above distorts the resulting face in the manner of a rough, lo-fi cubist portrait. Nearby, Crow *BF 3, a black amorphous sculpture from this year, incorporates a toilet duck tilted at an angle atop a roughly gessoed wooden shelf. The asterisk and initials in several titles point to Barry Flanagan's studio, where Pritchard recently completed a residency and sourced some of her materials.
The formal vocabulary Pritchard draws from is recognizable—Free Form *BF 11, a snaky vertical arrangement of rope and rebar, echoes the delicate balance of Al Taylor's constructs, while pieces like Block Head Series and Free Form; Fire Works Series recall the playful papier-mâché sculptures of Franz West. Yet there is nothing derivative in the work. Three pieces presented as public sculpture proposals offer the most absorbing investigations of scale. Talking Heads Having a Yam; Sound Mirror, Hythe comprises three upright aluminum ice-cream scoops cradling a ball of yarn, hovering between folly and monument, a parody of Soviet modernist ambition. In Free Form *BF 1, miniature human figurines stand beneath a vertical assemblage of wood, silver leaf, and a single pool ball—tiny tourists visiting some postapocalyptic landmark.
The humor is genuine, but it never overwhelms the underlying compositional intelligence. Throughout the show, Pritchard demonstrates a sure sense of proportion and balance, most clearly visible in the paintings that punctuate the exhibition. Here, color and line interact in ways that recall early minimalism and late modernism's interrogation of the flat plane. Yet these paintings, like those of contemporaries such as Matt Connors or Fergus Feehily, insist on their own three-dimensionality; they refuse to stay flat. The work suggests an artist who allows herself to be guided by the materials at hand—a toilet duck, a pool ball, rope, ice-cream scoops—and trusts that formal rigor will emerge from attentiveness rather than predetermined plan. The result is a body of work that is lively, engaging, and invigorating, balancing playfulness with the kind of compositional seriousness that makes the work endure.
Citações Notáveis
Pritchard displays a wonderful sense of proportion, balance and composition throughout the show— The Irish Times review
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