The National Gallery of Ireland introduced a one-way system when it reopened after 100 days in lockdown: you enter at Merrion Square and exit on Clare Street. Among the new exhibitions it has mounted is Lace, Paint, Hair, which features three contemporary Irish artists — Fiona Harrington, Cian McLoughlin and Eimear Murphy — who are credited with making “significant contributions” to the gallery’s public programmes in recent years.
The title simply refers to the media used by each artist. We are told the exhibits were created during the lockdown and represent the artists’ responses to the coronavirus. McLoughlin’s two pieces, Crowd 1 and Crowd 2, are part of a series that predated the pandemic and originally explored the theme of crowd behaviour: how
