Samuel Laurence Cunnane: Blue Road
The first London exhibition by Irish artist Samuel Laurence Cunnane, brought together works from the past decade of his analogue photography practice.
Cunnane takes many of his luminous images during extensive periods of travel across Europe and beyond, returning afterwards to his native County Kerry in southern Ireland, where he meticulously develops the colour prints in his darkroom.
The photographs record fleeting scenes which might go unnoticed. And yet, with Cunnane’s sensitivity to subtle qualities of light and atmosphere, these commonplace subjects yield quiet and glowing intensity. The exhibition’s title refers to one such moment captured by the artist: a stretch of newly tarmacked road, appearing blue in the early evening light.
Cunnane’s work offers the viewer an invitation to look more intently. In such sincere looking, the world at once reveals itself and yet seems to remain stubbornly obscured.
Samuel Laurence Cunnane (b. 1989, County Kerry, Ireland) studied Photography in IADT, Dun Laoghaire. He was most recently a recipient of a year-long residency in the Internationales Kunstlehaus Villa Concordia in Bamberg, Germany and has been the subject of exhibitions at Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris (2025); Öktem&Aykut, Istanbul (2025, 2021, 2017); Kerlin Gallery, Dublin (2024, 2020, 2015); OCT Boxes Museum of Art, Shunde, China (2018); Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2016) and THEODORE: Art, New York (2015).
Cunnane’s work can be found in the collections of OCT Boxes Art Museum, Shunde, China; The TIA Collection, Sante Fe, New Mexico; the National Gallery of Ireland; the Arts Council of Ireland; the Trinity College Art Collection, Dublin.
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