Niall MacCrann
My painting and printmaking is about people and their dialogues, characters in the stage of life, real and imagined. I want to examine the flesh, bone and blood that constitutes human forms, and the complex relationships and narratives they manifest.
Characters in my work find themselves displaced in place or time, while unexpected visitors emerge, sometimes participants in abandoned cultural practices, manifestations of a sort of solastalgia, a longing for a time and place that has disappeared, or never really existed. My CV is available here.
The galleries below show examples of recent work (click on an image for more info). A portfolio of recent work is available as a pdf here. There is a little more information about my work at the bottom of this page.
Recent Paintings
Recent Etchings
I have exhibited regularly at Cambridge Contemporary Art, as well as in London, including at Mall Galleries and Bankside gallery. My etchings have been shown at Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair and Royal Society of Painter-printmakers exhibitions (awarded the East London Printmakers prize for outstanding print). In 2023 I was awarded a residency at Cambridge Artworks for my MA degree show, and last year I took up the Expanded Print residency at Graphic Studio Dublin, and was shortlisted for the Ingram Prize.
A solo exhibition of my paintings and prints, Do you Feel Irish?, opened at the London Irish Centre in October 2024.
My next body of work was A certain critical period, using a phrase from a short story, Love Letter, by George Saunders as a starting point. This includes a moving-image piece developed as Expanded Print Resident at Graphic Studio Dublin.
A 3-week residency at Cill Rialaig Arts Centre, a place rich in the history of migration, spurred on that body of work, which I showed as part of a two-person exhibition, Moss animals, at Stapleford Granary Arts Centre. I will return to Cill Rialaig this August (8th-26th) for a solo-exhibition entitled Someone has firebombed McQuaid’s pharmacy
For more details for recent and upcoming work and exhibitions - see my blog, my recent work page or my instagram
