Skull Moss and the Diaphanous Body brings together new abstract paintings by Ballina-based artist Nuala Clarke alongside her 2025 book Irish Moss of a Dead Man’s Skull – a pairing that places image and text in direct conversation.
The exhibition takes its name from two interwoven ideas. Skull Moss – a medicinal material, the foreign growing within the familiar – appears here as an apparition of history: deeply buried, now resurfacing. It asks what we refuse to see, and what we must face to stem the flow of loss.
The Diaphanous Body speaks to human experience: moving in light, coloured by what surrounds and what reflects. It is the space inside and without – the waking state and the dream state, the known and the intimate and the unsaid.
Together, these works explore the intersection of abstract painting, natural philosophy, and the Irish alchemist Robert Boyle’s writing on the necessity of art to health – a research thread that has occupied Clarke for years and found its most concentrated expression here.
Exhibition open Mon-Fri 10am-1pm and 2pm-4:30pm.
Admission free, all welcome.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Nuala Clarke is a Dublin-born visual artist and writer based in Ballina, Co. Mayo. She spent twenty years painting and exhibiting in New York City before establishing her studio in Mayo following a fellowship award at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation.
Clarke’s practice explores the intersection of abstract painting, natural philosophy, and the work of Irish alchemist Robert Boyle – research that informed her 2025 book Irish Moss of a Dead Man’s Skull. This exhibition brings that book into dialogue with a new body of paintings.