What better way to celebrate a home-grown Roscommon artist than with an exhibition of his works to launch the new visual art space at Roscommon Arts Centre. “Coming Home” by Brian O’Doherty is his first ever exhibition in his native county.

The title not only evokes our own sense of nostalgia but is emblematic and fittingly accurate in acknowledging and celebrating the artist development, global success and the appreciation and admiration the locality has for him.

O’Doherty has had an illustrious career since devoting himself to the visual arts. He became an art critic, television presenter, arts administrator and an artist. Although his work in New York began as an art critic, the prestige of his own displays in New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as the Pompidou in Paris, the IMMA and the Hugh Lane in Dublin are testament to his own success as an artist.

As a highly respected author of numerous works of art criticism, including his book American Masters and the influential Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space (1976), O’Doherty was honoured with the Freedom of Roscommon at the IMMA in 2018 and it was there he was delighted to accept an invitation to show his impressive new work at the gallery space in Roscommon Arts Centre.

“Coming Home” includes a number of Brian’s new works, recently published by Stoney Road Press as limited edition prints in addition to a new variation of Rope Drawing #128 Flipped Corner (Green/Blue) from the IMMA Collection. Delightfully, the exhibition coincided with the new publication of the same evocative title, which includes proudly commissioned contributions from Professor Luke Gibbons, artist Katie Holten and arts writer Joanne Laws and Sue Rainsford in fond response to O’Doherty’s impressive expanse of work.

“Coming Home” has been funded by Creative Ireland and is presented in association with fine art print studio Stoney Road Press, Dublin and IMMA, Dublin.