PORTAGE brings together paintings, sculptural forms, ceramic vessels, and sculptural light to explore journeys shaped by wind, water, myth, and memory.
The title refers to the act of carrying a boat across land to reach new waters — an enduring image of migration, resilience, and the search for new horizons. It echoes Werner Herzog’s film ‘Fitzcarraldo’, where a steamship is hauled over a mountain in pursuit of an impossible dream. In PORTAGE, that same gesture becomes a metaphor for movement, for risk, and for the persistence required to cross from one world to another.
Andrew Murphy presents sculptures whittled from native Tasmanian timbers alongside paintings of reconfigured animals and beasts assembled from twigs gathered around his forest home. His works consider ecology, the boat, and hybrid forms that emerge in transit.
Murphy was born in Hobart in 1963, majored in painting and sculpture at the Tasmanian school of art and has been making and exhibiting art including public sculpture installations, fire sculpture performances and various residencies over the past few decades. He lives a quiet reclusive life in the bush with the trees and the animals
Mark Redden shows paintings inspired by currach voyages on the Irish coast. The currach is a traditional fishing boat typical of the west coast of Ireland, which he learned to build as a boy. The work traces a lineage of craft, labor, and navigation rooted in regeneration, reconciliation and wanderlust.
Born in Dublin 1979, Redden is an Irish visual artist working between Dublin and Barcelona. His practice involves painting, sculpture and drawing in a labourous process that investigates universal perception, memory and personal experience.
With particular attention to surface quality, colour, and composition, he renders symbolic forms that evolve and mutate in an ever changing environment, opening pathways to subconscious thoughts.
Abhainn Wheeler creates ceramic vessels bound to earth and water myths. The forms act as containers — of substance, of story, and of the memory carried across generations.
Born in County Wicklow, Wheeler is an emerging artist recently graduated from CCAD Cork in 2025 and currently works from Throwing Shapes Ceramic Studio as their Graduate in Residence. She is a contemporary ceramic artist, whose practice is inspired by Ireland’s myths, ancient folklore, and the quiet traces of history embedded in the land. Rooted in material exploration and hand-built processes, these sculptural vessels explore the relationship between place, memory, and storytelling, evoking a sense of ritual, belonging, and connection to the natural world.
Gildas O Laoire contributes a series of light sculptures and Verdigris Surface Studies that explore the forces of ocean currents, trade winds, and navigation.
Through illumination, texture, and structure, the works evoke guiding lights, tidal forms and distant horizons, reflecting the enduring relationship between movement, orientation, and the sea.
Born in Dublin in 1979, Gildas studied Furniture Design at TU Dublin and Architectural Model Making at DLIADT before working as a cabinetmaker and establishing his independent practice. A multi-year RDS Craft Awards honouree and regular exhibitor with the Design & Crafts Council of Ireland, he also lectures in Product Design and Timber Skills at TU Dublin.
Together, PORTAGE reflects on the vessel in all its forms — as boat, ceramic object, light source, and bearer of stories — while considering how migration, landscape, folklore, and the sea continue to shape our understanding of place, belonging, and journey.
PORTAGE group show opening takes place at Ton Gallery on Thursday July 30th at 6pm.
Feature Image: Andrew Murphy, Pack Horse,Oil on canvas,70 x 50 cm
