Ailbhe Ní Bhriain’s film installations depict archetypal or generic locations that have been transformed into a dream-like theatricality. Whether a flooded library inhabited by birds of prey or a disused airport housing a rudimentary landscape, these works conjure an altered reality in which our expectations of time and place do not hold.
The films are defined by a slowness of pace and employ either a stationary camera position or slow continuous tracking shots, through which geographical and pictorial instability gradually unfold. It is left unstated whether these scenes represent an imaginary ideal in the process of being constructed or the aftermath of a place or vision come undone.
Ailbhe Ní Bhriain has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally.
Recent and upcoming exhibitions include solo & shows at Domobaal, London, The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon and RHA, Dublin and group shows at The Library Project, Dublin, Espace Lhomond, Paris, The Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork and The Broad Museum, Michigan. Ailbhe has collaborated regularly with musicians and composers in the making of her work and is currently the recipient of a Visual Arts Project Award from The Arts Council. Ailbhe completed her MA at the Royal College of Art, London, and was awarded a PhD by practice at Kingston University, UK in 2008. She is represented by Domobaal Gallery, London and lectures at the Crawford College of Art & Design, Cork.
Image Credit
Inscriptions #1, pigment baryta print, 2017. Courtesy the artist & Domobaal Gallery, London.
Works List
Inscriptions #1, 2, 5, 8, pigment baryta prints, 2017
Reports to an Academy 1-4, video & CGI composite, colour, sound, 2015/16
Great Good Places I-IV, video & CGI composite, colour, sound, 2011
Colin Graham 