‘In a smart, ache, tingle’: The paintings of Midnight Feast by Louise Wallace: An exploration of form, imagery and sexual politics

Northern Irish female painters are poorly represented in exhibition and publication locally and internationally. This review article of Louise Wallace’s first major solo exhibition, Midnight Feast , in The MAC Belfast, 2023, considers her depiction of the Glengoland estate gardens of her childhood in 1970s west Belfast. The pictorial relationship between still life and landscape is explored in relation to the cultural and political history of Northern Ireland. Close attention is paid to the detail and materiality of the paintings and to the voice of the artist, particularly regarding the minimal visual presence of the female body. Connections made with Christina Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market’ and Deborah Levy’s Living Autobiography series frame the relationship between a younger and older self – the points of view of a girl and older woman in the paintings – and invoke the sexual politics and conditions of production of the work.