Tender moments, tender flesh, tender touch, tender thoughts, tender heart, tender mind; try a little tenderness. A tender moment is encapsulated in an act of thoughtfulness; a cup of tea at the end of the day, a gift of flowers, a display of love. Tenderness is to give up one's time, attention, precious moments devoted to another. Tenderness is also pain, a moment of fragility, of weakness. It evokes skin which expands, shrinks, multiplies, and shivers to the touch. Skin which is a dying organism, for surely that is what we all are. A tender morsel of meat, deliciously melts in the mouth. Exploring these themes in contrasting ways ‘Try a little Tenderness’ brings together the works of three artists whose practice is unified in the attempt to capture these fleeting moments.

Ingrid Berthon-Moine’s multidisciplinary work explores the human experience in all its humour, its beauty, fleshiness and rawness. Using simplified forms, Berthon-Moine hints at notions of sexuality, life and death, often with a playfulness which encourages the sensation of touch and tactileness.

Flora Bradwell’s practice revels in the generously grotesque. Spanning painting, soft sculpture, installation and performance, Bradwell takes the bodily form and mutates it into giant proportions. Colourful and comforting yet monstrously alien, questioning notions of home, care and our relationship with our own bodies.

Damien Flood’s work spans painting and sculpture and are recognisably traditional but steeped in surprisingly modern principles. Tender moments are captured, fleeting as if a dream, yet tactile enough for recognition. The experience of a lived experience and the fleeting moments we cherish and cling to.

All are welcome to join us to celebrate the opening of ‘Try a little… Tenderness’ on Saturday 4th February 5-8pm, kindly sponsored by Old Dairy Brewery.

This exhibition is proudly sponsored by Culture Ireland.

Ingrid Berthon-Moine is a French visual artist based in London. A multi-disciplinary artist, her work examines the construction of gender identity and its behavioural consequences in our society. In 2020, she created the online project ‘I Lack it, I Like it’ where she interviews womxn, who work in various fields of the artistic and creative industries, on their notion of lack.

Flora Bradwell completed her BA in Painting at City & Guilds of London Art School in 2009 and her Master of Fine Arts at the Slade School of Fine Art in 2021. A compulsion towards the carnivalesque and a vibrant trashy aesthetic are key to Flora Bradwell's playful practice. Encompassing painting, sculpture, video and performance Flora's work revels in the generously grotesque. Compositions of frescoes, cult manifestoes and nursery rhymes are squeezed through a fantastical filter to create dimly recognisable imagined worlds. Camp and theatrics are employed to demonstrate the ridiculousness of patriarchal systems and gossip fuels visual flights of fancy as the props of daily life are put on a pedestal.

Damien Flood is an Irish artist based in Dublin. His work is grounded in early writings on philosophy, theology, alchemy, and the natural sciences and explores the mutability of 'reality' and language. Flood has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally including Dubai, New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Berlin, Cologne, Knokke, Modena.