Press: Sunday Times 17 June 2012

Elements of Gary Coyle’s familiar yet disturbing world recur in these recent charcoal drawings, including the hooded figure who turns his back to the viewer in the shows title piece. Coyle has long being preoccupied with the idea of threat, both real and possibly imagined. He focuses on the locations of murderers and accidental deaths. Spears of rain drench the scene in Lane – Dun Laoghaire; a brooding globe keeps watch in Bad Moon. Some of the work occludes text and abstract elements, like the swirling circles that mass in the stormy sky of Algae Bloom (Fleur du Mal). A layer of binary code covers his people-less view of the Stillorgan dual carriageway. The shrouded figure in Haunted may be staring, unseen at the viewer, or facing, blind out to sea. As a body falls from a block of flats in a drawing called Arrgh, Coyle’s gothic tendencies nudge up against a dark comic-book style humour. He is at his best when he leaves you feeling unsettled without knowing exactly why.

Cristin Leach Hughes