3rd July 2025 – Exhibition

For his third solo exhibition at the Molesworth Gallery, Alan Phelan showcases his distinctive RGB palette, blending photography, painting, and sculpture. The works address numerous temporal moments, toying with understandings of time and history.

 Temporal Furniture is part of Alan Phelan’s ongoing investigation into the invention of colour photography. This is rooted in the work of John Joly and his colour screen process which gives the stripes and colours that pervades most of Phelan’s recent work.

There is furniture in the exhibition. Odd pieces sourced over the last year from auction houses, including a scientific instrument case, a cantebury, brass ribbon frames, a card table, and a cake box. All lovingly restored and now re-purposed to house Joly photographs.

Phelan’s works are guided by the concept of additive colour photography, using the Joly screen process as a metaphorical framework. Further research has led to various other additive methods from the early 20th century, which, much like the Joly process, fell by the wayside but employed unique patterns and geometries of RGB.

These have now been rendered as paintings with text overlays and 3d models photographed using the Joly process. Quotes from the American painter Mark Tansey provide a background commentary on generational failure, or rather the times when work fails to be seen and understood. Applied to the history of additive colour photography, this dialogue opens up the possibilities for a temporal shift in remembering.

There are a few twists in this narrative which brings the personal into the public discourse. Where the Joly, Thames, Paget, Krayn and Omnicore failed, the Autochrome succeeded. The Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis, won this early stage of colour photography. Fighting back for Joly, Phelan has cosplayed the brothers in three portraits with his husband. This queering of history is scattered throughout the exhibition from a large colour screen printed painting which expands the backstory to his RGB Sconce sculpture and critical commentaries on commodity culture via a ‘bespoke’ handbag and ‘custom’ tote. Two zines made for the recent Paris Ass Book Fair at the Palais de Tokyo Paris will also be available.

History is subjective, temporal in as much as it relates to time, but also the order and importance of events that can be skewed or upended to serve other purposes. There are different versions how this can be understood depending on what physics or cultural theory you believe or control. The past, present, and future do not necessarily even follow a linear path. Perhaps temporal furniture is just another way of describing antiques but intros instance it is about inventing a different way of remembering.

Alan Phelan (b.1968) is an artist based in Dublin whose practice began in photography and has extended into many different media and mediums with a focus on interpretation, language and collaboration. He studied at Dublin City University and Rochester Institute of Technology, New York. Recent exhibitions and projects include CCI, Paris; Void, Derry; RHA, Dublin; The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon (2019-21); Company of Others, CCA, Derry (2019-21); TBG+S Atrium (2019); The LAB, Dublin (2019);  Glucksman Gallery, Cork (2019) and the Molesworth Gallery (2021 & 2023). Our kind, commissioned by Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane for 2016/1916 was also screened in Oslo, Bergen, Derry, Belfast and Carlow where it won the Hotron Éigse Art Prize. Internationally he has shown at Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin; Garage, Rotterdam; Dada Post, Berlin; Loop, Barcelona; Videonale.15 Bonn Kunstmuseum; Detroit, Stockholm; Bozar, Brussels; Treignac Projet, France; Eastlink Gallery, Shanghai; Oksasenkatu 11, Helsinki; Mina Dresden Gallery, San Francisco; Galería Del Infinito Arte, Buenos Aires; ŠKUC, Ljubljana; SKC Gallery, Belgrade; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Public art commissions include works for Dublin City Council, Dublin South County Council, St Michael’s House Special National School Raheny and the Dept of Communications. Recent commissions include Sculpture Dublin, O’Connell Plinth, City Hall and Void OffSites. He was the NCAD School of Fine Art Artist in Residence for 2019-20.

With thanks to Fire Station Artists’ Studios; the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine; and Small Night Projects.

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