Makeshift is a painterly environment that holds creation and destruction in tension. A collage at an architectural scale, Makeshift has evolved through putting painterly representation under great strain. There is a rich practice of painting: layered in surface, mark making, visual languages, and the array of images. Irish has undone this constructive labour, however, slicing and puncturing it with a knife. He has then reassembled the fragments and shards to create a symbolic interior space.


The imagery is of a kind of home, but a home where everything is contingent and shifting, where inside and outside are confounded, and where a longing to construct is contending with a destructive energy. In our culture, the house is often conceived as a still point in our hectic lives. In contrast to this stasis and intimate safety, Makeshift presents us with a most un-safe house, where the greatest aspects of one’s inner life are at stake and, terrifyingly, transformation is precisely what is hoped for.

Contact Phil Irish: philirish@wightman.ca