Brigitte Mulholland is thrilled to present Emma Roche’s first solo exhibition in Paris, Sideline. The show consists of new paintings that explore peripheral spaces and the figures who occupy them: people on football pitch sidelines, in workspaces, classrooms, and domestic environments. The works themselves are often partially made in these locations. Lines are knitted or stitched in the studio, but also while watching her son’s football training; in the car or classroom during a work break; beside a child who is doing homework or asking for more screen time; or below the camera during an obligatory weekly Zoom meeting.
Known for her unique technique of knitted paintings, Roche has eschewed the format of the canvas while embracing the materiality of paint itself. The new show sees a further evolution in this approach, particularly in her new Screed series, wherein works are built from thick skins of paint that recall plaster or building materials; fine lines of paint are then stitched in places, overlaying drawings, notes, and bits of homework text that the artist has found in or near her home studio.
Line is both the subject and object of Roche’s work. Her process begins with a syringe or piping bag, which she uses to create long strands of acrylic paint in varying densities and thicknesses. The lines droop and sag before being stitched and secured by the artist. Through her very particular way of working, there is almost a collaboration and mutual exchange with the medium. Pushing the limits of paint in this way reveals its polymorphous qualities, allowing the material's own disobedient tendencies to determine its outcomes, rather than a preliminary drawing or plan. Throughout this process, paint lines are strewn with blobby glitches and accidents, a peculiar kind of mark making, and result in a physical record of the artist’s time and labour as well. These influences feed into the work alongside art historical references, where abstraction and materiality morph and veer toward figures engaged in the everyday. They reflect the conditions in which the work is made: in conjunction with, or even in spite of, life’s other daily demands.
Much of Roche’s work has featured personal scenes and imagery from her own life and family. In this exhibition, she has also included a new series of biographical portraits, the Icon series. The portraits are inspired predominantly by Irish women in public life and collectively offer an alternative feminine group, rather than the familiar line of suits occupying positions of power in Ireland’s governments and on its screens. Many of these works refer to specific speeches or events. Here, Roche continues in her defiance of the notion of knitting as a lesser art form, and flips the stereotypical narrative of hierarchy between painting and craft, as well as the narrative of portraiture and its typical subjects.
In all, Roche’s new exhibition is composed of paintings that register current anxieties, both on a personal and global scale. The imagery evokes a world falling apart, and the seemingly impossible task of stitching it back together.
With many thanks to Culture Ireland and Arts Council Ireland for their kind support.
