Sian Costello, Solo Exhibition

Supported by Connect 5 in partnership with GOMA Gallery Waterford, Wickham Street Studios Limerick, Engage Art Studios Galway, BKB Studios Dublin and Sample-Studios Cork.

In 1618, Peter Paul Rubens painted ‘The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus’, following the art historical tradition of the image of mythological rape. Swirling in mass of drapery and flesh are the sisters Phoebe and Hilaeira, naked, hauled up into the arms of their captors. Their terror is muddled with ecstasy. In Sian Costello’s performance and painting, she uses her own lived, female experience to reveal the inconsistencies between these glowing images and their dark narratives. Using her own body in the place of the artist’s model, she subverts the traditional studio dynamic and knits together the corporeal experience of model and artist. Painting binds these experiences to the canvas in oily sticks and powdery pastels whose connotations hold significance both on gallery walls and within a lady’s dressing table.

About the Artist

Sian Costello (b. 1998, Roscommon) is a multidisciplinary artist and studio-based member of Wickham Street Studios, Limerick City. Since graduating in 2020 with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art painting from Limerick School of Art and Design, Costello has exhibited widely in group exhibitions in Limerick, Galway and Roscommon, along with recent solo shows at the Courthouse Gallery, Ennistymon, Co. Clare, and internationally with Flat Octopus at Detroit Stockholm, Sweden. Her current studio practice explores issues pertaining to femininity, corporeality, perception and the female image within the art historical canon.

This exhibition is presented as part of Connect 5, a partnership initiative between GOMA Gallery Waterford, Wickham Street Studios Limerick, Engage Art Studios Galway, BKB Studios Dublin and Sample-Studios Cork which will present a series of five solo exhibitions of selected studio members, in venues across Ireland in 2022.