Gerard Dillon at the Ulster Museum
I visited this super show last week in Belfast. Just one room, but carefully chosen by someone with an eye for Dillon’s important works. So each picture is a substantive work; there is no padding with minor works. As ever, for me the show preached to the converted. I have no doubt that Dillon was a considerable artist; possibly limited by his subjective emphasis on his own neuroses, but producing exceptional work around that large theme, encompassing life and death and of course the dilemma of the gay man in the hostile culture of his time. His reputation cries out for wider consideration in the British art world rather than being treated solely as a Northern Irish artist.
Great credit to the Ulster Museum for putting this on.