Sheila Rennick’s images are rooted in the context and culture they reference, so despite hints of satire and caricature there is a familiarity of these realities and worlds. In a series of drawings, with neon inks and gestural marks, Rennick’s cacophony of references include aspirational or clichéd visions of femininity, through popular culture or on social media, to more intimate familial scenes depicting a burgeoning new maternal identity.
For Commonage, Rennick has propagated the perimeter of the space with a floral border, where orchids germinate and are entwined with other adornments that blossom and rot. The works hint at isolation, claustrophobia and self-care or preservation, and how desires, relationships, fantasies and aversion are
represented publicly and privately.
Born in 1983 in Galway, Sheila Rennick has degrees in Fine Art Painting from The National College of Art and Design, Dublin and St. Martin’s College, London. In 2007 she was one of 30 selected for The Jerwood Contemporary Painting Prize. Rennick was awarded runner up in The Marmite Painting Prize 2016. Her work appears in many collections, including The Office of Public Works, Dublin; The Arts
Council Ireland; and Country Bank, New York as well as many private collections.
She is represented by Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin and has exhibited extensively in Ireland, the UK and the USA. Rennick lives and works in London.
Commonage is a space for testing new ideas that encourage commonality, experimentation and dialogue, through online projects, events and exhibitions. Exhibitions are presented in our project space gallery, which sits alongside a café, architecture design studio and co-working space to create cross-pollination, collaboration and integration into this hybrid environment by facilitating conversations between individual and collective creative processes. Commonage hosts online projects and public events through screenings, workshops and other outputs as other ways to test work. Programmed by Séamus McCormack, Commonage operates with the support of The Common E2 and Common Ground
Workshop.
For all enquiries please contact: info@commonageprojects.com
