Martin Gale was born in Worcester (England) in 1949, but his family moved to Ireland soon after. Trained at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin from 1968 to 1973, Gale has cultivated a style of dislocation and isolation that befits the indirect human dramas at play.
Invested in both private (including workshops) and institutional cultural initiatives, he joined the Visual Arts Committee of the Project Arts Centre in 1973. His first solo exhibition would follow two years later at the Neptune Gallery in Dublin.
The 1980s is when Gale truly becomes recognised as a household name of Irish contemporary painting. He represented his country at the 11th Paris Biennale (1980); was the subject of an Arts Council touring exhibition that travelled across Ireland; and held a solo exhibition at the Taylor Galleries (with which he later became a frequent collaborator).
The style with which Gale is associated is that of a photorealist landscape painting with a haunting documentarian edge. What the painter documents, captures, are the subtle shifts of Ireland’s rural vistas, and the impact on its inhabitants. Although the transition underway is never judged, there is an uneasy weariness inherent to the depicted transformations. Humanity, even if only indirectly featured, is always a looming presence, both vulnerable victim and blind perpetrator of multiple mutations. The tension, in which dreams erode and expectations are met with disillusionment, is the crux of his unsuspectingly complex compositions.
In the 21st century, this narrator of change was celebrated for his painted stories. A major retrospective was held first in 2004 in the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) Gallagher Gallery, and subsequently in the Ulster Museum in Belfast in 2005. In 2013, he was the recipient of the RHA Award for a Senior Artist at the 184th Annual Exhibition and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Art from the national University of Ireland, Maynooth shortly after.
Other acknowledgements include: the Oireachtas Award (1973); the Irish Book Design Award for Best Illustration (1985); and the RHA award (1991).
