Cork artists explore the space between land and sea
Johnny Bugler and Diarmuid Breen
Johnny Bugler and Diarmuid Breen’s shared interest in the liminal space between land and sea is very much to the fore in their current joint exhibition at the Lavit Gallery in Cork.
In many ways, their output differs - Bugler is a printmaker, sculptor and assemblage artist, while Breen is a painter - but each has produced a body of work that clearly takes its inspiration from man’s relationship with the beach.
Printmaking came first for Bugler, who studied at Crawford College of Art and Design in Cork before completing an MA at Camberwell College of Art in London. “The MA, in Fine Art Printmaking, was a great experience,” he says. “It was very much self-led. There were teachers I could approach if I needed help with anything, but mostly I was left to my own devices. I had the luxury of time and the freedom to experiment, and there was so much to see in London, so many galleries and exhibitions.”
On returning to Cork, he became a technician and studio manager at Cork Printmakers. “I enjoyed that very much. I got to work with so many other artists, and there was always a great atmosphere of creativity.”
His own work was collected by the National Gallery of Ireland, the Office of Public Works and the Bank of New York Mellon, and in 2015 he won a commission from Cork City Council to paint a mural at Singer’s Corner in the city centre.
Along the way, he began to experiment in different media. His works at the Lavit might be described as collage or assemblage, combining as they do elements of printmaking and sculpture with found objects and other materials. It’s a direction he is happy to have taken.
“Printmaking can be very laborious,” he says. “When you’re etching, for instance, you need a new plate for every colour. Whereas when I work with collage, I can play around with colours and textures. It’s very freeing, very enjoyable, and it keeps things interesting for me. I often work with rectangular shapes. I like selecting pieces that create a sort of balance; it’s got more to do with the composition being a pleasure on the eye than with what it might mean.”
Bugler’s relationship with the beach goes back to his childhood. “I’ve always enjoyed swimming, and I worked as a lifeguard in the summers all through college. I love combing the seashore for materials. When you find timber that’s been in the sea, it’ll often have a patina of colour on it, or marks and scores from where it’s been bashed against the rocks. I used a fridge door that I’d taken from the sea in one piece of mine; it had this lovely orange rust on it.”
Like Bugler, Breen spent all his summers on the beach. “I grew up on Friars Walk in Cork,” he says, “but we were the kind of family that, once we got school holidays in the summer, my father dropped us down to the caravan at Barleycove, and he’d come back to collect us the day before the schools re-opened in September.”
He got to know Bugler a few years back when he started experimenting with screen-printing at Cork Printmakers. “We admired each other’s work,” he says, “and Johnny very kindly asked me to come on board when he was offered the show at the Lavit.”
Breen originally trained as an engineer, and was showing his paintings on the side when someone suggested he apply to study on Technology University Dublin’s BA in Visual Art programme on Sherkin Island. “That was in 2008, when I was 36,” he says. “So I was 40 by the time I qualified. But I’ve never regretted it.”
He got to know the veteran landscape artist John Doherty while he was studying in West Cork. “John introduced me to the Taylor Galleries in Dublin, and they asked me to do a solo show in 2018. They were great to work with, and they’ve represented me ever since. These days I work three or four months each year for an environmental consultancy business, and the rest of the time, I paint. My boss, John Moore, is an art collector, and he’s always been very encouraging.”
Breen moved to Monasterevin in Co Kildare a few weeks before the Covid lockdown. “It was the first time in my life I couldn’t get to the seaside, and all the swimming pools were shut, so that probably got me thinking a lot about people on the beach. I’d done a few of these paintings when Johnny contacted me, and that was all the encouragement I needed to keep working on the series."
He often works with found photographs. "I’ll take figures from the photos and put them in some scenario of my own creation. People can read the paintings any way they choose, but to my mind, they’re all about encouraging you to go out and enjoy life, and to make the most of the day that’s in it. There’s a cloud in most of the pictures, just to remind people that it could be raining tomorrow. I like to think that the figures I paint are happy, though I’m told that the man in one of them looks pretty sullen. The way I see it, he’s on his way to the beach, and he’ll be happy when he gets there.”
Breen is currently working towards two solo exhibitions. “There’s one at the Blue House Gallery in Schull in September, and another at the Garter Lane in Waterford in the New Year. I’m going back to a series called Existing Realities, which is based on people’s working lives. The paintings at the Blue House will be small studies, which is what I usually begin with, and I’ll be showing larger paintings at Garter Lane.”
Bugler swapped his role at Cork Printmakers for one in the education sector a few years ago. “I’ve always taught,” he says, “and eventually I went back and retrained as a primary teacher. That’s the day job now, but I’m always making art. I’ve got very involved with Print Network Ireland, which ties in various studio groups around the country; that’s opened up all sorts of opportunities for me in the future.”
- Johnny Bugler & Diarmuid Breen is at the Lavit Gallery in Cork until Saturday, May 13. Further information: lavitgallery.com
