The Square Tomato Exhibition Opening

“Fingleton’s small watercolour and ink drawings have a charming immediacy, while confronting us with their inherent incongruities. She is the type of artist – she is also a grower, farmer and writer – who wears her rich and wide-ranging knowledge lightly. To this lightness of touch, she adds an extraordinary depth of purpose, encouraging us to consider the often appalling absurdities that have crept into our conception of what is natural and normal”… …“Through her work she aims to nudge us out of what she describes as an anaesthetised state of amnesia and overwhelm. “In one generation they will forget that tomatoes were round,” notes Fingleton’s sentient red fruit in The Square Tomato (2024) but it doesn’t have to be that way”. …“The challenges we face are interconnected, but just as pollutions and poisons flow into the threaded networks of roots and the trickling tributaries of the water table, this exhibition opens up another set of networks. As Fingleton explores, a line of defence against the infinitely sophisticated manipulations of corporate communications lies with the equally infinite opportunities of art. Running counter to the narrative that claims it is too late and that there is nothing now to be done, there is instead always a new alternative to explore. Yes, there is an underlying anger in some of the work in The Square Tomato, but there is also a remarkable sense of hope, and that is ultimately the energy that this work inspires and ignites” – Gemma Tipton is a writer and curator, writing for The Irish Times, and other Irish and international publications.