Collection: 'Bell the Cat' - Hugh Byrne

Bell the Cat

Solo Exhibition

23.11.24 - 04.01.25

EBONY/CURATED Bordeaux House

Bell the Cat, Hugh Byrne's latest solo exhibition, marks a significant milestone in the artist's ongoing partnership with the gallery, celebrating ten years of creative collaboration. This exhibition offers a new selection of works, while reflecting on the stylistic evolution that has defined Byrne’s creative trajectory as a non-figurative visual artist. Presenting a rich and multifaceted narrative, Bell the Cat juxtaposes never-before-seen photographs and preparatory sketches alongside a selection of new works which together form an intricate portrait of Byrne’s creative journey.

For Byrne, art-making is an act of continual reinvention—an embrace of play and possibility that sees the boundaries of medium, form, and technique constantly shifting. Arts writer Sean O’Toole aptly observes Byrne’s engagement with the act of painting as "dynamic and alive"- resisting finality and refusing to settle into predictable expressions. To directly quote O’Toole:

“There is a quality, or maybe it is even a fundamental characteristic, an essence then, about Byrne’s zestful and zingy work –work that never settles, is always shape shifting, continually finding new expressions, persistently embracing opportunity, frequently arguing with what a painting might be, and, more fundamentally, with what painting is – that brings to mind the Japanese word ‘asobi’. The word is widely used in everyday Japan, known to everyone, because it speaks to an ambition, if not pursuit, shared by all humanity: play.”

It is this spirit of curiosity and innovation that pervades Byrne’s work and informs his approach to painting which is driven by instinct, intuition, and a profound sensitivity to his environment. His studio—its tools, materials, and the remnants of previous works—becomes both site and stimulus for new compositions. This exhibition provides an intimate look into the artist’s world, offering viewers the opportunity to engage with the raw, unrefined inspiration that drives his creative practice forward.

In his earlier pieces, Byrne adopted a methodical approach, stacking or overlapping colours with precision. While this sensibility remains, over time Byrne has allowed his style to become more spontaneous and fluid. His current work is marked by a looseness that invites chaos and unpredictability—an expression of freedom within the constraints of the medium. Yet even in these more unrestrained moments, his compositions retain an underlying sense of order, a tension between geometric structure and organic form.

Byrne’s work engages in a quiet meditation on the elemental nature of materials, avoiding narrative content in favour of investigating the process of making. The struggle of these elements, working in opposition yet ultimately achieving harmony, becomes the work’s primary content. There is critical interrogation at the heart of Byrne’s approach as he explores the process of making itself.

In Bell the Cat, Hugh Byrne invites the viewer to reflect on the unfolding of this dynamic journey. It is a celebration of ten years of transformation, experimentation, and discovery—a decade of art-making that continually challenges our understanding of what a painting, a sculpture, or an object can be. Through this exhibition, Byrne reaffirms his position as a key figure in contemporary non-figurative art, one whose work is as much about the act of creation as it is about the culmination of these decisions into the final artwork which meets the viewer in the gallery setting.