Samuel Laurence Cunnane
Fabric, 2023
Hand-printed C-type print on archival photo paper, framed
edition of 3 + 1AP
32 x 47.5 cm / 12.6 x 18.7 in image size
53 x 68.5 cm / 20.9 x 27 in framed
Kerlin Gallery is delighted to present Late Spring, an exhibition of analogue photographs taken by Samuel Laurence Cunnane in the Spring of 2023.
Late Spring is the latest instalment in a multiyear project made while driving across continental Europe. Cunnane captures moments of idiosyncratic beauty that catch his eye as he passes from place to place, documenting the surfaces and textures of urban and rural locales and the peripheral zones between them: signposts, building sites, midcentury architecture; the tangled woodlands and desolate roadsides that orbit our settlements. There’s a sense that the grandeur of modernity has ebbed away here, been layered over with new, makeshift infrastructures.
Dunes, 2023
Hand-printed C-type print on archival photo paper, framed
edition of 3 + 1AP
19.4 x 29.5 cm / 7.6 x 11.6 in image size
41 x 50.5 cm / 16.1 x 19.9 in framed
A supermarket wall clipped free of its tiles becomes a blank abstract painting; a fence cuts through a French modernist seaside resort – the kind the artist’s grandparents would holiday in; a synthetic curtain flares in the light of a tiny Warsaw hotel room. Minimal in composition, the photographs often feel like the opening shots of films, poised and waiting to be animated. Late Spring also includes several portraits of the artist’s friends in moments of quiet repose. An intimate counterpoint to the transience of life on the road, they capture light falling delicately on the backs of hands, shoulders and necks, illuminating subjects who seem inattentive to the camera’s gaze. These photographs give atmospheric glimpses into their subjects’ lives and yet retain a sense of mystery – moments of meeting and passing in the anachronistic universe Cunnane so adeptly conjures.
Boundary, 2023
Hand-printed C-type print on archival photo paper, framed
edition of 3 + 1AP
32 x 47.5 cm / 12.6 x 18.7 in image size
53 x 68.5 cm / 20.9 x 27 in framed
Samuel Laurence Cunnane
Boundary, 2023
Hand-printed C-type print on archival photo paper, framed
edition of 3 + 1AP
32 x 47.5 cm / 12.6 x 18.7 in image size
53 x 68.5 x 4 cm / 20.9 x 27 x 1.6 in framed
Samuel Laurence Cunnane
Fur, 2023
Hand-printed C-type print on archival photo paper, framed
edition of 3 + 1AP
32 x 39.5 cm / 12.6 x 15.6 in image size
53 x 60.5 x 4 cm / 20.9 x 23.8 x 1.6 in framed
SOLD
Samuel Laurence Cunnane
Sicily, 2023
Hand-printed C-type print on archival photo paper, framed
edition of 3 + 1AP
19.4 x 29.5 cm / 7.6 x 11.6 in image size
41 x 50.5 x 4 cm / 16.1 x 19.9 x 1.6 in framed
SOLD
Samuel Laurence Cunnane
Signpost, 2023
Hand-printed C-type print on archival photo paper, framed
edition of 3 + 1AP
19.4 x 29.5 cm / 7.6 x 11.6 in image size
41 x 50.5 x 4 cm / 16.1 x 19.9 x 1.6 in framed
SOLD
Samuel Laurence Cunnane
Lucy I, 2023
Hand-printed C-type print on archival photo paper, framed
edition of 3 + 1AP
32 x 47.5 cm / 12.6 x 18.7 in image size
53 x 68.5 x 4 cm / 20.9 x 27 x 1.6 in framed
Samuel Laurence Cunnane
Lucy II, 2023
Hand-printed C-type print on archival photo paper, framed
edition of 3 + 1AP
32 x 47.5 cm / 12.6 x 18.7 in image size
53 x 68.5 x 4 cm / 20.9 x 27 x 1.6 in framed
Samuel Laurence Cunnane
Dorje, 2023
Hand-printed C-type print on archival photo paper, framed
edition of 3 + 1AP
32 x 47.5 cm / 12.6 x 18.7 in image size
53 x 68.5 x 4 cm / 20.9 x 27 x 1.6 in framed
Samuel Laurence Cunnane
Mirielle, 2023
Hand-printed C-type print on archival photo paper, framed
edition of 3 + 1AP
29.5 x 19.4 cm / 11.6 x 7.6 in image size
51 x 40.5 x 4 cm / 20.1 x 15.9 x 1.6 in framed
SOLD
Samuel Laurence Cunnane
Fabric, 2023
Hand-printed C-type print on archival photo paper, framed
edition of 3 + 1AP
32 x 47.5 cm / 12.6 x 18.7 in image size
53 x 68.5 x 4 cm / 20.9 x 27 x 1.6 in framed
Samuel Laurence Cunnane
Hotel de Police, 2023
Hand-printed C-type print on archival photo paper, framed
edition of 3 + 1AP
32 x 39.2 cm / 12.6 x 15.4 in image size
53 x 60.5 x 4 cm / 20.9 x 23.8 x 1.6 in framed
Samuel Laurence Cunnane
Dunes, 2023
Hand-printed C-type print on archival photo paper, framed
edition of 3 + 1AP
19.4 x 29.5 cm / 7.6 x 11.6 in image size
41 x 50.5 x 4 cm / 16.1 x 19.9 x 1.6 in framed
Samuel Laurence Cunnane
Car crash outside Milan, 2023
Hand-printed C-type print on archival photo paper, framed
edition of 3 + 1AP
19.4 x 24 cm / 7.6 x 9.4 in image size
40.5 x 45.1 x 4 cm / 15.9 x 17.8 x 1.6 in framed
Samuel Laurence Cunnane
Blue road, 2023
Hand-printed C-type print on archival photo paper, framed
edition of 3 + 1AP
32 x 47.5 cm / 12.6 x 18.7 in image size
53 x 68.5 x 4 cm / 20.9 x 27 x 1.6 in framed
Samuel Laurence Cunnane
Prop stand, 2023
Hand-printed C-type print on archival photo paper, framed
edition of 3 + 1AP
32 x 44 cm / 12.6 x 17.3 in image size
53 x 65 x 4 cm / 20.9 x 25.6 x 1.6 in framed
Samuel Laurence Cunnane
Hotel curtain, 2023
Hand-printed C-type print on archival photo paper, framed
edition of 3 + 1AP
19.4 x 29.5 cm / 7.6 x 11.6 in image size
41 x 50.5 x 4 cm / 16.1 x 19.9 x 1.6 in framed
Photograph by Francois Jonquet
Samuel Laurence Cunnane
b.1989, Co. Kerry, Ireland.
Lives and works in Kerry
Samuel Laurence Cunnane works with analogue photography, capturing scenes with a detached “floating eye” perspective. Whether in Guangzhou, Tehran, the Balkans, or his native Kerry, Cunnane is drawn to the unnoticed periphery: the outskirts of the city, where plants battle with concrete; the edges of housing developments, where newly built homes surround mounts of upturned earth; the frontier between interior and exterior, demarcated by fences, windows, topiary. His photographs deromanticise the popularly sentimental, with landscapes interrupted by utilitarian infrastructure, and yet their sensitivity to light, framing and texture give them a cinematic quality. Responding to the increasingly dematerialised nature of contemporary image making, Cunnane remains connected to the physicality of the production process, printing his photographs by hand in a darkroom. The resulting C-type prints are relatively small in size, resonating with the restrained, intimate nature of the work.
Samuel Laurence Cunnane has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; OCT Boxes Museum of Art, Shunde, China; Kerlin Gallery; Öktem&Aykut, Istanbul and THEODORE: Art, New York. Recent group exhibitions and projects include Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork; Lismore Castle Arts, Ireland; Stations, Berlin (all 2023); National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin (2019) and Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda (2018). Cunnane’s work can be found in the collections of OCT Boxes Art Museum, Shunde, China; The TIA Collection, Santa Fe, USA; the National Gallery of Ireland; the Arts Council of Ireland; Office of Public Works, Ireland and the Trinity College Art Collection, Dublin. A publication with a text by Brian Dillon, Professor of Creative Writing at Queen Mary University of London, was published in 2020.
Join Samuel Laurence Cunnane for an informal walkthrough of his new exhibition.