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What lies beneath: Make Bunting Great Again by Jack Hickey
Make Bunting Great Again by Jack Hickey
Oil on canvas courtesy of the artist and The Doorway Gallery ourtesy of The Doorway Gallery
Make Bunting Great Again by Jack Hickey
Niall MacMonagle
March 15 2020 02:30 AM
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America. And the big 2020 question is will Trump be trumped? In 2018, Cobh-based artist Jack Hickey visited Long Island.
With its "white picket fences, the American flag on the front lawn, I was in iconic suburbia" and an image that struck him became his painting Make Bunting Great Again. Knowing that, in itself, 'Make America Great Again' isn't a negative statement, Hickey says "it's the Trump connotation that colours it".
The deliberate title, both serious and humorous, rewrites Trump's mantra.
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"By changing the word 'America' you automatically defuse the weight of that statement. Humour can be used in this way but runs the risk of not being taken seriously. It's a fine line, but the important thing is the engagement. Can it bring about discussion?"
This clapboard house is in Hicksville, Long Island and "my challenge was to paint something original but reference these iconic aspects". His answer is this brilliantly sharp and beautiful still life.
"It's more about American self-pride than anti-Trump." For Hickey, "art can make you see or realise something that you haven't already noticed. Art can be used as social commentary but it can also be used for propaganda and political gains. I prefer the viewer, even Donald Trump, to take from it what they will".
For young Hickey, art was a pastime, but in secondary school he "actively pursed it. It was the one subject I was good at and knew I could excel in".
Having worked long and hard, at 29 he won the 2017 Hennessy Portrait Prize and his technically superb commissioned portrait of Marie Cassidy now hangs in the National Gallery.
"Most people believe you are just 'born with it'. I disagree. The key is 10,000 hours. If you want to be an artist, patience is necessary. Nothing happens fast in the art world."
At Crawford Art College, "the most important thing I learned was how to be an artist, asking the question, 'what am I trying to express through my work?'."
He's a social individual and though an artist's life means "being alone for long periods of time, when not physically working you are still constantly thinking and observing".
Film and photography inspire him but "in the past decade we have been bombarded with imagery and video clips and these art forms are now diluted. Painting is relevant again".
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State Pathologist Prof Marie Cassidy beside her portrait by artist and Hennesssy Portrait Prize recipient Jack Hickey at the National Gallery.
In the frame: Gallery unveils portrait of State Pathologist Cassidy
In the frame: Gallery unveils portrait of State Pathologist Cassidy
The Journal April 8th 2018
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The Journal April 8th 2018 Part II
WINNER OF THE HENNESSY PORTRAIT PRIZE 2017
My Time, 2017
Oil on canvas, 57 x 72 cm
"In my work I attempt to illuminate the emptiness at the centre of human relationships, the inherent lack of meaningful interaction between different people, different sexes and different realities. The open space in the work represents the distance between individuals, the unsaid and the unrequited. It is an example of the void inherent in a modern, socially fractured world, where true human contact has become elusive, almost impossible. They strive to show the hole at the centre, the empty room within, the point where unease begins. My style of painting is honest, by creating places, figures and objects with which the viewer can instantly interact with and not feel detached from."
Jack Hickey (b.1988) was born in Cobh, Co. Cork. He graduated from Crawford College of Art and Design, Cork in 2011, where his degree show was positively received.
The 2017 Hennessy Portrait Prize has been awarded to Jack Hickey for his painting My Time. Its subject is a woman lying, apparently on a bed, her eyes open, a blank green wall beyond her. Sparing in colour, it is rendered with dramatic chiaroscuro.
The artist says that he was attempting “to illuminate the emptiness at the centre of human relationships”. Born in Cobh, Co Cork, he graduated from the Crawford College of Art and Design in 2011.
The prize is worth €15,000, plus a €5,000 commission for a portrait to be included in the National Portrait Collection. This year for the first time there were two additional prizes of €1,500 for highly commended works. They went to David Hamilton for his portrait Cormac, which he worked on when both artist and sitter were patients in hospital, and Myra Jago for her self-portrait Reflection. Her work demonstrates her interest in “symmetry, reflection and the mirrored image, where filaments of bounced light . . . look as real as their origin, yet remain devoid of substance.”
This is the fourth year of the prize. A panel of four judges – James Hanley, Niamh MacNally, Patrick T Murphy and Dr Yvonne Scott – selected the winners, and a shortlist of 24 works, from 270 entries.
An exhibition of the work of all shortlisted artists is on view in the Portrait Gallery of the National Gallery of Ireland until February 2018. The previous winners are Nick Miller, Vera Klute (who was also shortlisted this year) and Gerry Davis.
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5. Jack Hickey, born Co Cork, 1988
Hickey paints photo-realist, film noir-ish scenes in which fragments of semi-clad figures or single, significant objects provide clues to angst-ridden stories of lonely nights out and isolated sexual encounters. He graduated from Crawford College of Art in Cork in 2011. Cristín Leach
"Jack Hickey's fragmentary views of figures in interiors are well judged."
"...Jack Hickey displays a level of technical ability beyond that of many recent graduates.
Hickey, in particular, is the real deal, an artist with a clear vision and the ability to realise it in paint.
His canvasses - of glimpsed figures in otherwise empty rooms - are some of the best in recent graduate exhibitions."
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"New graduate shows raise the question of whether art should be led by ideas or skills, Cristín Leach...
...Jack Hickey, at the Crawford College of Art and Design (CCAD) in Cork, combined skill with concept in a
series of intensely atmospheric realist paintings of near-empty rooms with glimpses of their half-dressed occupants."
"There are no faces, and there's a certain film noir feel to this work.
It's about the possible significance of those private silences and in-between moments that punctuate our lives."
"recognises artists who have made prominent contributions to art in Ireland and have continued to influence the younger generation of artists"
