Hannah Ireland
Hannah Ireland’s gestural and expressionist paintings hint at personhood and individual character. Figures don devilish smirks, exaggerated black eyelashes, or smushed-to-the-photocopier type noses.
Hannah Ireland (Ngāti Hine, Ngāpuhi) is a contemporary artist, born in 1995 and lives in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland
Hannah is a portraitist in a very loose sense of the word. Her work bears the hallmarks of the genre in that they hint at personhood and individual character. The spacing of features such as eyes, lips, and nose are roughly around where they should be. Or just enough for them to be read as faces. Figures don devilish smirks, exaggerated black eyelashes or smushed-to-the-photocopier type noses. In this way, Hannah is simultaneously evasive and generous with the information she decides to dole out. It’s evasive as you’re not ever really afforded certainty at what you’re looking at, but it’s generous in that I don’t think certainty is the point. The open-endedness of it all allows the viewer their own interpretation.
Part of the murkiness of Hannah’s painterly information lies in the process itself. A key component of the artist’s practice is a method of painting on glass, sometimes on found or abandoned windows. This format calls for a painting in reverse. Whereas building pigment up on canvas or some other opaque surface means the foreground is often painted last, painting on glass means the initial brush strokes appear first and the background is built up in layers behind it. With Hannah’s work on canvas, she first uses her familiar glass painting technique to build up paint and composition which in turn is pressed or printed onto another surface. From there, she works and reworks into the image. This multi-step process allows the potential for abstraction, ambiguity and spontaneity with the resulting portraits embodying a vagueness that encourages speculative analysis.
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At the Risk of Being Crude, 2022
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Do I Repulse You With My Queasy Smile, 2022
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Drawn Curtains, 2022
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Habit To Intrude, 2022
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Hiding Out Beneath the Table, 2022
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I Don't Wanna Talk I'm Dancing, 2022
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I've Been Waiting For You, 2022
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If Threes a Crowd, One Slipped Away, 2022
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Pardon My Manners, 2022
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Public Parking, 2022
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Send My Love, 2022
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Traveling Cars, 2022
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We All Fall Down, 2022
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You Don't Know My Name, 2022
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Airport Kindness , 2021
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Every Body, 2021
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Falling Water, 2021
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Gave Me No Flowers , 2021
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Hannah Ireland, Tell me about it, 2021
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Hoping the reflection will tell me something, 2021
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I don’t believe I know you, 2021
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If only, 2021
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In a thread of bubbles, 2021
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Left me low in the car park with my high heels, 2021
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More Space to Ourselves, 2021
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Mum said I was supposed to be born a boy, named Aaron, I think about him sometimes and how life would be, 2021
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Pretend it makes sense, 2021
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Refused a Head, 2021
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Something about the way I felt when I woke up, 2021
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Spliced Silence, 2021
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Wasting Time, Just a Little Bit, 2021
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Cheeky Kiwifruit, 2020
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Cry Me a River, 2020
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The Concrete is Melting, 2020
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You Choose, 2020
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Summer Selection
25 Jan - 11 Feb 2023Jhana Millers reopens for 2023 with a selection of works by gallery artists.Read more -
Hannah Ireland, It feels so good to be alive
26 May - 18 Jun 2022Hannah’s gestural and expressionist portraits hint at personhood and individual character. The spacing of features such as eyes, lips, and nose are roughly around where they should be. Or just...Read more -
Hannah Ireland, Stuck in the mud
13 May - 5 Jun 2021Hannah Ireland, Stuck in the mud. Exhibition at Jhana Millers Gallery, Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington, Aotearoa New ZealandRead more
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Portraits in Hamilton
Peter Dornauf, EyeContact, February 15, 2022 -
Hannah Ireland, Stuck In The Mud: Making Faces
Lachlan Taylor, Exhibition essay, May 13, 2021 -
Award winners announced for Molly Morpeth Canaday Award Painting and Drawing 2021
The Big Idea, February 15, 2021 -
Award Winners - Molly Morpeth Canaday Award Painting and Drawing 2021
Molly Morpeth Canaday Award, February 14, 2021