39.50 by 59in. (100.3 by 149.9cm)

Title: AT THE SPAR - TONG, 2004-06
Note: Aidan Dunne in his review of An Enquiry II, in The Irish Times 18 May 2019, writes:"Corcoran had previously reworked paintings from the Western tradition in ways that anatomised and questioned their underlying cultural assumptions on beauty, gender and privilege. But An Enquiry marked a development in that, rather than manipulating the imagery – absenting the physical presence of female sitters and leaving vacant, elaborate costumes, or replacing female heads with substitute signifiers such as birds and flowers – the female presence is predominant, and challenging. Subsequently, one of her key works drew on Eduard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, an absolutely stunning, at first glance straightforward painting with surprisingly complex optics that continue to perplex analysts to an almost comical degree. The male customer is glimpsed in a mirror but the subject is the barmaid, and she is at ease in her domain. Corcoran’s protagonist, in her take on the subject, At the Spar: Tong, is behind the counter of a local supermarket. If Manet’s barmaid is at one remove in that she inhabits a male-dominated setting, Corcoran’s Tong, who looks perhaps Chinese, is to some unknown extent an outsider, but she too is comfortably in charge of her environment."

oil on linen

signed, titled, dated and with Kevin Kavanagh Gallery label on reverse