In Mythologies, John Kindness once again fuses the ancient and modern, delving into classical texts and finding characters, themes and narratives that still resonate with us today. Herakles is a shipyard worker; Poseidon advertises designer watches; ancient harps and lyres are hybridised with electric guitars because they essentially offer same thing - music to accompany storytelling. As evidenced by the recent Hollywood version of Homer’s Odyssey that drew huge audiences to cinemas, the strength of these ancient mythologies’ sustaining power remains: they mean something deeper than just a good story, continuing to intrigue and reflect humanity thousands of years on.
As ever, the work is underpinned by the artist's command of his subject matter and techical mastery of an endless series of media and substrates. ‘John Kindness's Odyssey is fragmented and witty and often drolly observed,’ Aidan Dunne wrote in the introductory essay to the book that accompanied the artist’s show at the RHA in 2023. ‘It's extremely faithful to Homer and uses traditional media, while slyly merging ancient and contemporary throughout. Thoroughly accessible and direct, it nonetheless takes a while to read each of its several dozen constituent pieces, because every single one is itself something of a composite, more often than not invested with multiple, heterogeneous layers of meaning and inference. This is so in terms not just of the image, but also of the representational language and the visual conventions employed. Each piece is constructed as though by a modern day, multifaceted Arcimboldo, constantly inviting us to rethink what we are seeing even as we are seeing it.’
Mythologies will open over the course of Dublin Gallery Weekend 2026. We'll also be hosting an in-conversation between John and Patrick T Murphy at midday on the afternoon of Saturday, November 7th. Admission to the talk is free but booking is essential. BOOK HERE.
John Kindness is one of the most outstanding Irish artists of his generation. His career to date includes solo exhibitions at the Ulster Museum, the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art and the Royal Hibernian Academy, while his work is the collections of the British Museum, the V&A Museum, IMMA and the Hugh Lane.
