Helen Blake presents a new exhibition at The Cash Shop in Gort

The Cash Shop, a visual arts hub in Gort, will unveil its latest exhibition on June 21st. Find out more here...

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Three kinds of time
Helen Blake

21 June – 16 August 2025
The Cash Shop
Bridge Street, Gort, County Galway, H91VH21
Opening reception: Saturday, the 21st of June, 12pm-2pm

"There is something musical in how Helen Blake’s work unfolds over time. This is true of the artist’s process; it is also true for the viewer. The longer you spend with Blake’s work, the more it yields. Blake paints meticulously, in oils, on an increasingly small scale in recent years, using canvases at times no larger than an average paperback. At first impression, these works convey a bright, orderly abstraction, composed of diamonds, lozenges, triangles, and jagged serrations, interlocked with a grid like rectilinear formality. However, upon closer inspection, these repeated shapes and geometric impressions are not so streamlined or symmetrical as they appear; they are not the product of careful planning but the result of gradually accreted layers of colour, one laid one on top of the other, affecting one another without intermingling." - Dr. Nathan O’Donnell, from Recent Works Molesworth Gallery, March 2017.

Helen Blake is a painter whose practice focuses on colour; engaging with rhythm and formalism, chance and deliberation. Using a working method where process and contemplation guide the evolution of the work, she constructs overtly hand-made paintings which record and examine colour conversations within accumulating pattern structures, embracing accidents, flaws and discrepancies within their rhythms.

Starting from an imprecise grid structure, and rejecting the use of pre-drawn lines or tape, she builds up layers of simple hand-painted lines and geometric shapes – square, triangle, rectangle, chevron – to create intricate surfaces where colour fragments can interact, sing together, harmonise, and sometimes jar.

Blake grew up in Belfast and graduated with an honours degree in Visual Art from Aberystwyth University, Wales. She lives and works in County Wicklow, Ireland. She was runner-up for the Contemporary British Painting Prize 2022. Other awards include the Arts Council of Ireland Visual Arts Bursary Award; The Model Cara Award, Sligo; County Wicklow Visual Arts Open, Overall Winner, Mermaid Art Centre, Bray, adjudicated by Patrick T Murphy, Director, RHA. Eleven solo exhibitions to date include Molesworth Gallery, Dublin; Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast; Limerick Museum; Mermaid Art Centre, Bray; FUTURES14, RHA, Dublin.

Her paintings have been shown in numerous exhibitions both nationally and internationally, including in the RHA Dublin and RA London Annual Exhibitions. She is represented by Molesworth Gallery, Dublin and Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast.

The Cash Shop is a curatorial project by artist Jim Ricks and is a community-engaged contemporary visual arts hub in South County Galway.

Follow @the.cash.shop on Instagram to find out more.