Martin & Hobbs is a unique collaborative project between the painter Fergus Martin and the photographer Anthony Hobbs. This collaboration developed out of their first work together, Martin¹s 2001 solo exhibition at Green On Red Gallery, in which he exhibited a series of lambda print self-portraits which Hobbs had digitally manipulated. My Paradise is Now is their second exhibition together, and their first in Ireland. In April 2003, to significant critical acclaim, they showed My Paradise is Here at The Oratorio di San Ludovico in Venice.

sMartin & Hobbs have collaborated to bring together their experience as a painter and as a photographer. This exhibition will include a frieze which the artists have loosely based on figures from an Assumption by Rosso Fiorentino (1494 - 1540). Specifically, Martin & Hobbs¹s project came out of a desire by both artists to explore new ways of experiencing the human figure as a living entity. Both artists were attracted to the physical quality of the pictures. Thus the work was realised photographically in order to attain the extraordinary level of detail and clarity necessary to create the illusion of reality. The images are not manipulated, yet Martin & Hobbs have created images which breathe and constantly shift in focus.

All of the works in this show are of Martin¹s figure clothed in white - suggesting an almost ascetic and trance-like state - and assuming various poses. The images do not consciously form a narrative sequence but instead come from Martin & Hobbs¹s interest in Renaissance painting and in the nature and texture of skin and fabric. The figures, though natural and unmediated, appear staged as tableaux. Their gestures and postures are representative of states of being. The scale of the photographs and the simplicity and sparseness of the images position the viewer so that he or she is actively engaged in the physicality of looking while simultaneously becoming all the more conscious of their own states of Œbeing¹ within the gallery¹s space,

Fergus Martin had a solo exhibition, Pipe Dreams, at the Butler Gallery, Kilkenny in June/July 2003, and he took part in the Festival of Contemporary Art, L¹art d¹être au monde, held in Melle, France in July/August 2003.

Anthony Hobbs took part in the RHA Annual Exhibition in June 2003, and was a participant in the Culture 2000 ŒDigital Surface¹ project which resulted in a presentation of the work at Tate Britain in June 2003

Martin & Hobbs will give a Gallery Talk on Wednesday 22nd of October at 6.30 p.m. Please email or phone the Gallery to reserve a seat.