Ivan McNally: Rock, Paper, Wood

Ivan McNally is a Belfast based multi-disciplinary artist. Paper and wood have been a staple of his artistic process for years, with chiselled stone sculptures just the latest addition to his repertoire of materials. This is the first exhibition featuring all three mediums together.

This collection of his work is designed to be exposing and rough. The heaviness of the lines reflects the unflinching emotions that encompassed each artwork’s creation and encompass McNally himself.

Rock, Paper, Wood gives exhibition attendees a messy, honest look into grief during the aftermath of death. Many of the pieces were created after McNally lost his daughter Hazel to suicide in 2020. Here, the anger; heartbreak; frustration; and love that McNally holds has been poured into forming each piece on display.

Throughout, McNally reconfigures both himself and his loved ones into angular, abstract creatures; features are warped, expressions uncanny. However, despite this abstraction, their humanity and emotions are starkly on display; characters are literally deconstructed; their hearts, brains and innards are openly on display, left visible for the viewer’s interpretation.

McNally combines these fantastical characters alongside a selection of extinct and rare animals, creating an exhibit that feels like something out of your strangest dreams.

All of this is coupled with the heavy feature of fragmented poetry and prose, particularly present within the paper artworks. The surrealist tone that’s prevalent in all of the written word heightens the dreamlike state of this exhibition, reinforcing the sharp landscapes and angular nature of McNally’s sculptures and artworks.