The current exhibition at the County Museum is by Eugene de Leastar ‘Oh, the Allegory’. Pictured, left to right: Cllr Michael Murphy, Marie McMahon, Managing Museum Curator; Eugene De Leastar, artist; John Kennedy, artist and Chairperson of CJAF’23; Aisling Kilroy, owner and curator, The Narrow Space.

Major museum exhibition

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Tipperary Museum of Hidden History in association with Clonmel Junction Arts Festival 2023 joins with local artist and sculptor Eugene de Leastar for an incredible exhibition ‘Oh, the Allegory’. The title of this exhibition refers to the painting “Beatrice”, the inspiration for Dante in the Divine Comedy. In an analogy of beauty leading to truth, Beatrice guides Dante towards paradise.

However, this show has also a lot to do with hell. In several large paintings (taking inspiration more from Bruegel the Elder rather than Hieronymus Bosch), Eugene de Leastar explores the nightmare themes of the Apocalypse; the four horsemen and the soul's decent into hell.

Another work deals with what the artist regards a particular form of hell ‘the inscrutable follies of philosophers’.

In a series of bronze sculptures de Leastar explores further the idea of the beauty in the guise of the Greek goddess, and this leads to another of his themes that of the ‘eternal mother’.

The exhibition at the Tipperary Museum of Hidden History, Mick Delahunty Square, Clonmel, runs until September 9.

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