NEW YORK, NY.- Sikkema Malloy Jenkins announced the representation of Isabel Nolan, in collaboration with Kerlin Gallery in Dublin.
Isabel Nolan’s expansive practice unites sculpture, textile, painting, and drawing within a constellating model of artistic inquiry and meaning-making. Nolan is fascinated by the contingency of history and the inter-subjectivity of human experience. Her subject matter is drawn from chance and cumulative encounters with a wide variety of sources, including historical records, hagiographies, literary and artistic traditions, and cosmological phenomena. The material scope and scale of her practice are similarly expansive, ranging from architectural sculptures and monumental tapestries to colored pencil drawings and water-based oil paintings on canvas. Drawn to both intimacy and vastness, Nolan’s work reveals the strangeness and beauty of a shared existence within an immense universe.
Isabel Nolan will represent Ireland at the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia from May 9 to November 22, 2026. The commission’s title, Dreamshook, refers to the sensation of waking from a dream, when reality is temporarily destabilized and alternate realms of experience linger and dissipate. Nolan’s installation for the Irish Pavilion comprises hand-tufted tapestry, drawing, and sculpture in an exploration of dream states and thresholds. The project engages narratives spanning the late Middle Ages to the Renaissance, incorporating influences from Christianity, humanism, and Italian painting and architecture. Dreamshook reflects Nolan’s interest in the resonance of the past with the present and the dissolution of boundaries between the intangible and the real.
Isabel Nolan (born 1974) lives in Dublin. Recent solo exhibitions include 499 Seconds at Chateau La Coste, Aix-en-Provence, France (2023); flotsam, jetsam, lagan and derelict at Void, Derry, Ireland (2022); and A delicate bond which is also a gap at Solstice Art Centre, Navan, Ireland (2021). Nolan was included in the 2025 Liverpool Biennial BEDROCK, presenting work at the Walker Art Gallery and a newly commissioned outdoor sculptural installation at the John Moores University.
Nolan’s work is included in the public collections of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Crawford Art Gallery, Cork; The Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin; the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin; and TATE Britain, London, among others.
