Mark Joyce

‘ Wandering Star ‘ Solo Exhibition

11 April 2026 - 15 May 2026

Green On Red Gallery is proud to announce a new solo exhibition by Mark Joyce. The ' wandering ' in the exhibition title is a reference to the physics of light and celestial mechanics.  It is also a nod to his artistic journey over the decades through the indeterminacy of painting.   Joyce uses an arc motif, an elemental unit of human invention and expression with oblique reference to early human structures, to manuscripts and notations or, as the artist likes to say, to ‘ stuff holding stuff up ’. 

These works set out with a procedural rigour. However, motifs that appear stable go through repetition and variation, modest but consequential, becoming out of kilter. From a rhythmic and mechanical foundation, a bending of the light, familiar like the rings of Saturn - or the passing lights on the nearby orbital motorway - the errors accumulate, an entropic unspooling, fragmenting towards chaos and disorder.   

We are reminded of John Gayer's response to Joyce's Newtonians ( 2009 ) Green On Red Gallery exhibition of new paintings where he describes how Joyce " steps up the chromatic intensity with three sets of monochromatic oils that recall the scientists's accordance of musical divisions to the colours of the spectrum. These paintings pulse across the walls... each panel can be read as a note and each set of panels as a chord.... Sound and colour parry off each other to sonorous effect that encourages us to contemplate parallels between music and art. "  ( " Mark Joyce The Newtonians  Ciarán Murphy March ", Circa Art Magazine, Issue 127, Spring 2009,  pp. 102-104. ) 

" Cassini " refers to Giovanni Domenico Cassini (1625–1712), an Italian astronomer who made pioneering observations of Saturn.  More recently, NASA's Cassini-Huygens spacecraft spent 7 years reaching and 13 years orbiting Saturn, landing on Titan, its largest moon, before crashing into its atmosphere in a Grande Finale.                                                                                 

“ These new works were painted in my studio at Broom Bridge on the Royal Canal in Dublin, Ireland, where, in 1843, William Rowan Hamilton scratched his Quaternion formulas into the stone of the bridge, laying the foundations for the new celestial mechanics and chaos theory. ”   Joyce ( 2026 )

Mark Joyce is an artist and educator based in Dublin whose practice is characterized by an ongoing inquiry into the physical nature of light and the materiality of pigment. He studied at the Royal College of Art, London, and has held solo exhibitions in Ireland, the UK, and the USA. He has been a Professor of Practice in Yale University and the National University of Singapore, Visiting Professor at Kyoto City University of the Arts, and Erasmus Mundus Visiting Fellow in the University of Arts, Helsinki, and is currently a lecturer at IADT in Dublin. His work is represented in public collections, including the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Arts Council of Ireland/An Chomhairle Ealaíon.