Sarah Dwyer: Penti Menti

The title of the inaugural monograph of Irish artist Sarah Dwyer to the art historical concept of pentimento—from the Italian, pentirsi, “to repent”— which refers to the visible traces of an artist’s revisions within a painting. For Dwyer, these transformations lie at the heart of her practice: painting becomes a process of layering and erasing, of burying and excavating, mirroring how memory and time shape both body and landscape. It includes an in-depth essay by author and Frieze Magazine Editor at Large Jennifer Higgie on the themes and processes of Dwyer’s oeuvre in an international context, a text by Dr Yvonne Scott on Dwyer’s connection to Ireland and to nineteenth- and twentieth-century art movements, and rich illustrations of the artist’s works and exhibitions.