Gavin Friday visits Guggi’s exhibition at the Kerlin Gallery

Gavin Friday’s lifelong friend Guggi (Derek Rowan) is currently exhibiting work at the Kerlin Gallery in Dublin. It’s Guggi’s third solo exhibition with the gallery and it runs through April 25th.

A catalogue featuring an introduction by the Irish-born American painter and Turner Prize nominee Sean Scully accompanies the exhibition. Scully writes:

“In his beautiful small studio he shows me chairs that are the same as the ones he sat on as a child that he managed to find agin and buy as a man. He also shows me the enamelled metal jugs that inhabit his paintings. These are the ones he hated as a child that he now loves. That he now affectionately draws into his paintings. And always with a deep love and restraint. This is an act of retrieval. I do this myself. I have a teapot that looks like a house that I bought for my mother when I was eight. I’d rather have a truck driven through one of my paintings than lose this. When I see this quality in another person, I see how futile it is and how noble to keep trying to put it right. To fix the train that left the station forty years ago.”

We accompanied Gavin’s second visit to the exhibition last week, away from the opening night crowds. He pointed out his favourites and some of the details on Guggi’s work while we shot a few pictures. Click the link below to view.

To learn more about Guggi’s work:

• Listen to an interview on RTE’s The Arts Show
• Watch Guggi on the Late Late Show (Near the end of the stream) (April 3, 2009)