The Boxing Diaries, an exhibition by Sarah Walker
“Now, whoever has courage and a strong and collected spirit in his breast, let him come forward, lace on the gloves and put up his hands. (5.363-364)” – Virgil, The Aenei.
The Boxing Diaries, an exhibition by artist Sarah Walker, opens in the Oliver Sears Gallery on 29 Molsesworth Street in Dublin 2 tomorrow evening, January 15, (6pm).
This intimate series of paintings with dead flat spaces and heavily impastoed figures documents the travails of the artist’s two sons as they train and compete as young amateur boxers from 2009 to the present day.
SARAH WALKER_Price List 13Jan15
Sarah Walker_The Boxing Diaries_Interior of Catalogue
Sarah is the mother of Seamus and Emmet Lyons who box out of the Bantry BC in Cork under Andy Kerins.
She said: “We live in the Beara peninsula, West Cork, about an hours drive from Bantry. The show is all about the journey around the country and taking part in the championships. Seamus has made it to the Nationals four times and Emmet once.
“The paintings are about parenting, youth training and respect between trainers and youth engaged in a sport with a specific culture.
“They are about the social, cultural and physical distance between the background of a parent growing up in Dublin 4 and the life of teenagers growing up in West Cork with a huge interest in a sport not available in their home area, the achievements of a couple of trainers and a group of young boys coming from a relatively tiny club in Bantry with the longest distance to travel of any of their opponents’.
The artist was born in Dublin and lives with her family in Eyeries, West Cork. Her mother was the well-known art critic Dorothy Walker.
The exhibition continues until 19th February 2015.
