UNFIXED GROUND
Patricia Doherty
8 May – 19 June 2026
Location: Scenius Gallery, Sligo
Gallery 1 (Adelaide St.): Street-facing installation, viewable 24 hours
Gallery 2: Open Monday–Friday, 10:00–17:00
Admission: Free
About the Exhibition
Doherty’s studio practice is a process of working with oil-based pigment on stretched linen and mixed media work on paper. The work draws reference to elements in the natural world, though mostly through memory, imaginings, and improvisations. Surfaces are often developed using opaque and translucent layers. At times these can obliterate, disguise, or leave traces of underlying forms behind. This process-based approach places the work in dialogue with a broader contemporary return to painting as an expanded field of thinking-through-making, rather than seeing an image as closure. Her interest therefore lies in a conceptual framework whereby painting reflects its own history, registering time, duration, and hesitation. Inviting the viewer into a slower perceptual engagement with looking.
Artist
Patricia Doherty
Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Patricia Doherty graduated from Camberwell College of Art in London with a BA (Hons) Degree in Fine Art and received her MA in Painting from the Royal Academy Schools (London). During postgraduate study she was awarded the Dunoyer de Segonzac scholarship and was the finalist selected from London Postgraduate Art Colleges by curator Prof. Norman Rosenthal on behalf of BBC London. Since returning to Ireland, she has lectured in Art and Design, and her work has been represented by the Fenderesky Gallery in Belfast since 1997.
Her work has been in numerous group and solo exhibitions including RHA Dublin, Stadtmuseum Amberg (Germany), Beep Painting Biennial (Wales), Model and Niland Gallery (Sligo) and Ormeau Baths Gallery (Belfast). In 2006 she was the recipient of a three-year studio award by the Zitzelsberger Foundation in Regensburg, Germany. Whilst resident in Germany she had a number of solo and group exhibitions with venues including the Oberpfaelzer Kuenstler Haus (Schwandorf), BBK Ostbayerische Kunstausstellung and Galerie Carola Insinger in Diestelhausen, (Bavaria).
Her work is held in private and public collections including: Office of Public Works (Dublin), Staatliches Bauamt (Regensburg), BBC Art Collection (London), DoF (Northern Ireland) and Boyle Civic Collection (Ireland).
Instagram: @patriciadoherty.visualartist
Credits
Curated by Marita O’Hanlon
With Scenius Gallery