Gallery Talk: Winter Solstice and the Turning of the Wheel

Join Jay Hōdo Roche for a talk looking at art, friendship and nature through the lens of the mystical realism of Zen. Taking place in the street-facing Gallery at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, this talk takes advantage of the incoming morning light on the occasion of the Winter Solstice. Based on a longstanding friendship with the artist Fergus Feehily and themes and conversations they have shared over the years, the talk will reflect on the surrounding gallery environment of Fergus’s solo exhibition Fortune House.

Fortune House is situated in deep winter, taking place on both sides of the solstice, continuing into brighter days. This changing context draws on ideas of illumination, making associations with places as far-reaching as the megalithic site of Newgrange and the neon streets of Shinjuku, Tokyo. These locations have personal significance to the artist, bridging time and memory through the exhibition.

The title, Fortune House, conjures a vision of a site where luck, prosperity, or a glimpse into the future might be found. Feehily states an increasing reticence to explain his work, allowing ideas around the art-making process to be puzzled out and questioned. He seeks an experience of looking without the need to pin down or impose a fixed meaning.

Jay Hōdo Roche was born in Dublin in 1968. He studied fine art painting in what is now IADT, graduating in 1990. He works professionally as an artist and runs a design and craft company based in county Wicklow. He was ordained as a Zen Priest in 2018 and is now a teacher at the Dublin Zen Centre in Temple Bar. He lives in Greystones, county Wicklow with his wife and children.

Fergus Feehily born in Dublin now lives and works in Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions include Lulu, Mexico City (2022); La Maison de Rendez-vous, Brussels (2020); Galerie Christian Lethert, Cologne. (2019) and Misako & Rosen, Tokyo (2018). His work has been shown at The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Dallas Museum of Art; X Museum, Beijing; Tokyo Opera City; June, Berlin; Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles; Capital, San Francisco; The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Sydney Non-objective; and Two Rooms, Auckland. In 2023, a major new monograph on the artist was published by Zolo Press, Mexico City/Brussels.

Event Information:Seating will be provided. For further access information please contact Learning + Public Engagement Curator Órla Goodwin.

Temple Bar Gallery + Studios is a leading artists’ studio complex and contemporary art gallery in Dublin City Centre. A centre for creativity in the capital, we provide a place for artists to thrive and ways for you to experience contemporary art. For free. For everybody. Founded in 1983 - by artists, for artists.