Ballina-born artist returns Moy-side to headline two exhibitions
The Ballina-born artist returns to bringing together two bodies of work, which will run concurrently.
Ballina-born contemporary abstract artist, painter, and poet Val McLoughlin is returning Moy side to headline a major homecoming with a dual exhibition in his hometown.
The first exhibition, ‘Quarters’, runs at the Ballina Arts Centre from August 8 to September 26. It features abstract paintings inspired by McLoughlin’s preparatory sketches along the banks of the River Moy.
Between 2016 and 2020, the artist kept a visual diary with the simple aim to ‘catch something’, a four-year study he began translating into this major body of canvas work in 2020.
Running concurrently at the Ballina Library from August 6 to 27 is ‘Out of Ink’. Created using Chinese inks on Japanese Ho Sho paper, this collection utilises a strict palette of black and red to deliver a unified, calligraphic energy where landscape and gesture meet through fast, immediate mark-making.
"Marks, strokes and space" is a phrase McLoughlin frequently uses to describe his process. It also serves as the title for an accompanying essay by curator and writer Ian Wieczorek, who notes that while ‘Quarters’ is slow and layered, ‘Out of Ink’ is quick and direct.
Despite these stylistic differences, Wieczorek emphasises that both collections share the same underlying visual sensibility. Seen together, the exhibitions trace both a record of recent years and a retrospective pull toward earlier memory, a crossroads of past and present that McLoughlin describes as ‘an exhibition as journey’.
Admission to both exhibitions is free.