Look at the Harlequins!: Isabel Nolan’s Playful Exploration of Art, History, and Humanity

‘Stop moping! … Look at the Harlequins!’
‘What harlequins? Where?’
‘Oh, everywhere. All around you. Trees are
harlequins, words are harlequins. So are
situations and sums. Put two things together –
jokes, images – and you get a triple harlequin.
Come on! Play! Invent the world! Invent reality!’
— Vladimir Nabokov, Look at the Harlequins! (1974)

Kerlin Gallery is delighted to announce “Look at the Harlequins!”, a solo exhibition by Isabel Nolan. Ahead of Nolan’s forthcoming representation of Ireland at the 61st Venice Biennale in 2026, this exhibition offers an insight into the artist’s practice characterised by its shifting movement between mediums, where sculpture, textiles and works on paper are held in lively dialogue, celebrating and communing with historical figures and works of art that speak to us across centuries.

The works in this exhibition look, in particular, towards the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance – an era marked by transformative technological changes, pandemic, religious and political conflict, not unlike today. Nolan seizes upon small, perhaps overlooked, details from historic works that reveal interpersonal dynamics, or reflect upon the place of humans within the world. A towel draped over a wall adds an unexpected touch of domesticity and intimacy to a religious scene by Francesco di Giorgio Martini, for instance; while the legendary Wolf of Gubbio, allegedly pacified by St Francis, ruminates on the dynamic between humans and animals, the wild and tame, the divine and the profane.

Across these works, Nolan continues her probing investigation into how humans orient themselves in a vast and unstable universe, in disorienting times. Themes of cosmology, mortality, belief and wonder resonate through drawings and objects that are grounded in craft yet open onto expansive intellectual terrains. Her works give generous form to fundamental questions about the ways the chaos of the world is made beautiful, or given meaning through human activity. In concert, her artworks feel equally enchanted by and afraid of the world around us, expressing humanity’s fear of mortality and deep need for connection. We are invited to consider the fragile architectures of knowledge and the playful unreliability of invention: a world where, indeed, harlequins might yet be found.

In 2026, Nolan will represent Ireland at the 61st Venice Biennale. Current and forthcoming exhibitions include BEDROCK, 13th Liverpool Biennial, UK (7 June – 14 September 2025); Southwark Park Gallery, London (2026); Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool (2027). Nolan has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Château La Coste, Aix-en-Provence; Void Gallery, Derry; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Mercer Union, Toronto; London Mithraeum Bloomberg SPACE, London; Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Solstice Arts Centre, Navan; Kunstverein Graz, Austria; Kunstverein Langenhagen, Germany and Musée d’art moderne de Saint Etienne, France.