Barrie Cooke HRHA (b.1931) Slower Dance, Forest Floor (1976) Mixed media - oil on board, 110 x 50.5cms & Bone box 12.5 x 50.5 x 19cms (43.5 x 20'' & (5 x 20 x 7.5'') Signed and dated 1976 verso ...

Barrie Cooke HRHA (b.1931) Slower Dance, Forest Floor (1976) Mixed media - oil on board, 110 x 50.5cms & Bone box 12.5 x 50.5 x 19cms (43.5 x 20'' & (5 x 20 x 7.5'') Signed and dated 1976 verso Exhibited: ''Barrie Cooke Exhibition'', David Hendriks Gallery, April/May 1976, Cat. No. 4 where purchased by the Dalys ''Barrie Cooke Retrospective'', Kilkenny Art Society, Aug/Sept 1981, Cat. No. 60 This work is the result of a three month stay by the artist in the equitorial forests of Malaya and Borneo. Cooke tried to capture the complication and vitality of what he experienced there. Brian Fallon in his review of the 1976 Cooke exhibition stated ''The pictures are mostly green,tropical and lush,as one would expect,and are closer to the lyrical mood of Cookes earlier work. Jungle light,which I assume is just as its shown here,has a curious effect of underwater,greenish gloom shot with flashes of brilliance.This,on the face of it,is not altogether removed from the watery world of Cookes pictures of a dozen or so years ago. A rich and individual show,by a natural and gifted handler of light and pigment. '' (Irish Times 27th March 1976) A similar version of this work was in The Gordon Lambert Collection and is now in IMMA's collection. Eimear Martin and Catherine Marshall wrote about their work ''Slower dance,Forest Floor'' is one of a body of works made using boxes that often incorporate mysterious organic looking material and found objects - such as bones,vegetation and sand. In this work,a perspex box projects from a semi-abstract oil painting depicting the rainforest.The combination of the painting and the box creates a number of dualities - present and past,organic and synthetic,fertile and uncontrolled versus the clinical rational construction of the box.A dialogue is established between an artistic understanding of nature and the scientific one suggested by the specimens in the box.At another level,as in much of his work,Cooke draws attention to the vulnerability of the earths ecosystems'' ''Irish Museum of Modern Art - the Collection'' 2005 Provenance: From the Collection of Paul & Catherine Daly

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