If you open your Instagram while waiting for a Dublin bus, you may be surprised to find a painted version reaching you before the real one.
Artist Carl Hickey is well-accustomed to playing both the role of artist and curator, especially in the digital sphere. He describes his Instagram (@carl.hickey_) as an ‘open notebook’ where viewers can get a more intimate sense of his artistic process. Photos of finished oil paintings are often accompanied by progress photos and a video reference, many of which Hickey himself takes while walking around Dublin. His works focus on small moments: a bus driver through the window, a child dressed in a Garda uniform, people walking down the street. Places, objects, and faces are softly defined, giving his works a distant though familiar quality- like trying to hold something in your mind’s eye.
The 26-year-old NCAD graduate is originally from Clondalkin in Dublin 22. Hickey has posted and displayed paintings inspired by Clondalkin several times, but his second solo exhibition on display at The Horse, Double Swan, is his first show dedicated entirely to his hometown. The Horse is an artist-run contemporary gallery in Dublin 1 with a focus on supporting the work of emerging and underrepresented artists. I recently had the opportunity to ask him some questions about his artistic history, process, and how Double Swan came together.
The title comes from a call at bingo in his hometown– “lucky ducks” for the number 22, the Clondalkin postcode. He further explains, “I then found out that swans return to the same place every time to fall back in love, which is sort of how I look at Clondalkin for art, I’ll always be able to draw inspiration from it.”
Hickey’s interest in art began in Clondalkin and eventually developed into a love for graffiti and hip-hop. This musical inspiration continues to impact how he creates and curates his work. He states that, like rap, painting “tell[s] stories and moments of the personal human experience,” and that he “looks at paintings like singles and exhibitions like an album.” If you listen to this story from beginning to end, he adds, then “you can walk away with something”.
The curation of Double Swan reflects Hickey’s interest in presenting a completed work akin to an album. If you have enjoyed getting to know Hickey’s artistic process through Instagram, Double Swan provides a unique opportunity to interact with his completed paintings by themselves. For Hickey, this curatorial choice allows his work to “speak for itself.”
Hickey states that anyone can interact with and find meaning in his work, but that viewers from Clondalkin and similar areas may find certain works especially engaging. Two works in particular, “Flowers and Hazmats” and “Moon (The Same Ceiling as Everyone Else)” were “painted specially for the people from [his] estate.”
Hickey’s art can also be understood as representations of himself and a documentation of his experiences. He states, “My work represents myself first, I paint things that I can identify with, rather than be who I am now or who I was over the years in the past. Painting things I find interesting or not so interesting, I love the madness and stillness of it all. It’s handy that way; it’s hard to lose interest or ambition to paint when I can draw inspiration from my day-to-day life. I look at painting as leaving something behind when I’m gone, so it’s important for me to document it all.”
Hickey’s works are more than replications of life in Dublin; they are meditations on the environment in which he lives and works. Whether or not we share that environment with him or if we have experienced the moments he captures in his videos and paintings, it is easy to resonate with the call to reflect on daily life. I find his works particularly captivating because I do not know what about them keeps bringing me back. Like the experience of everyday life, memories are collected and revisited, reflected and re-understood, through the passing of time.
When asked if there was a specific piece he was excited for people to see in the exhibition, Hickey stated, “I’m excited for people to see Double Swan, the title painting of the show, in person. It’s a big piece, and there’s something about that that feels new to me, like a new beginning to another way of working. I’m most happy with that painting at the moment, when I look at the work finished–that could change though.”
Double Swan will be on display at The Horse Gallery (3 Bethesda Place, Dublin 1) from October 9th to November 1st.
