Earth Solace & Blight

Curated by Dr. Margarita Cappock

The exhibition will be launched by Dr. Róisín Kennedy, Associate Professor and Head of School of Art History and Cultural Policy at UCD.

About the artist
Born in Dublin, John Noel Smith is a critically acclaimed contemporary artist known for his powerful, non-figurative paintings and sculptural installations. Following his art school education in Dublin and Germany, Smith lived and worked in Berlin for more than 20 years. Alongside fellow painter friends and colleagues such as Markus Lüpertz, Martin Kippenberger, A.R. Penck, Bernd Koberling and many others, Smith developed his painterly voice in a city that was at that time the centre of Europe's international art scene. Smith's paintings explore the convergence of personal memory, cultural history and the formal language of abstraction. These are works with universal resonance that speak of the persistence of conflict and global challenges; contrasting systems are embedded within the fabric of the painting, bridging the interplay between abstraction, narrative, intellect and emotion. John Noel Smith is a member of Aosdána and his work is included in important museum, institutional and private collections around the world

Guest speaker
Róisín Kennedy is Associate Professor and Head of School of Art History and Cultural Policy at UCD. She is former Yeats Curator at the National Gallery of Ireland. She has co-edited several publications on Irish art and visual culture including Visualising the Celtic Revival: The Arts and Crafts Movement in Ireland, The Collected Writings of Nicola Gordon Bowe, (Four Courts Press, 2024) and Harry Clarke and Artistic Visions of the New Irish State (Irish Academic Press, 2018). Her monograph, Art and the Nation State: Attitudes to Modern Art in Ireland, was published by Liverpool University Press in 2021.  Most recently, she has co-edited with Elaine Sisson, a special visual culture issue of the leading American Irish studies journal Eire Ireland, Ireland in Transition: Visual Culture, Technology, and Modernity in the Free State, published 2025.