UNTIL YOU BECOME WEIGHTLESS
Until You Become Weightless
Kunstverein Aughrim
13 September 2025–22 February 2026
Until You Become Weightless is the title of a new body of photographic and performative sculptural work by Ruth E Lyons. The artist developed a series of portraits of her family members as rocks. Originating with ‘Dad Rock’, a plywood cut-out, painted to resemble the jagged surface of a slender megalithic boulder, the series expanded to include Ruth, her husband, and five kid rocks. The 2-d sculptures have eye-holes and sometimes arm-holes, as well as bases and braces allowing them to stand freely in the landscape or wherever they are placed.
At intervals the family of rocks are choreographed and photographed. Both playful and poignant, the figures become temporary megaliths on wind swept coastal landscapes close to the artist’s home. Throughout this ongoing work, great joy is underpinned by a sense of sadness, perhaps reflecting the artist’s own experience of the presence of loss in her life.
The artist keeps a section on her website titled ‘postcards and telepathy’ where she chronicles everyday moments with family and posts updates on projects. Among the entries, titled July and posted on 4 July 2024, this powerful, poetic text lends insight into the artist’s thoughts on grieving, memory loss, and endings without end;
JULY
At some point he disappeared into the abyss, the vast blue.
Far from dry land.
There’s no coming back.
Why do we call the unpeopled places lonely?
I imagine him happily floating far out at sea, friends with the Wandering Albatross and the Little Tern.
With nothing solid to hold onto, in the vast fluid ocean, no specifics, no nameable object.
Gone is the whole catalogue of particular things.
If he ever touches land again, his strength will leave him and his bones will turn to dust.
I would cry but where does that leave us…Back here. Emotions are blunted by indifference.
Mute. Mum.
There was a time when he said that July was his least favourite month because of the lull in bird song.
That is such a specific thing, the sound of identifiable birds in time.
Empty that out
and that,
Along with every other thought
where do they go?
Some go into me
Some I have passed on to M, a new archiver of particular things
Others, into the great blue before and after
When I see him he is a shipwreck, a shatter of bones, strewn
Which is active, mind? body?
It feels like punishment to see him, like punishment to him, his being
And yet,
this too will pass.
And what do we learn?
Softness
Stillness
The feeling of time ebbing away
Drawn out, last breaths
in
out
years pass
Maybe we learn how to be with the dead,
that the dead never leave us
the raw life giving love fuels us in everything we do
on a rock
with feeling layers
its beautiful
because it hurts
The exhibition Until You Become Weightless at Kunstverein Aughrim is on view throughout Autumn/Winter 2025, closing in February 2026.
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About the artist:
Ruth E Lyons is an independent artist based in Clew Bay, Co. Mayo. She works primarily in sculpture creating gallery and public works concerned with landscape. She recently realised two major public artworks, Wave Junction, 2023, Quantum Park, Dublin and SUPERUNIFICATION, 2022, Honeypark, Dublin. Lyons’ work has been exhibited internationally and is included in the collections of the OPW, National Gallery of Ireland and Arts Council of Ireland. Since 2014 Lyons has been working on an expansive project with EUSalt and the saltmines of Europe creating carvings from the ancient Zechstein Sea. Recent exhibitions include: New Perspectives, National Gallery of Ireland, 2021, Shaping Ireland, National Gallery of Ireland, 2019, Borderlines, Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh and The Edge @ Bath Uni, 2019, The Necessity of Art, Grazer Kunstverein Summer Programme, Austria, 2017, Forecast of the Next Century, 2016, Broad Art Museum, Michigan, Riddle of the Burial Grounds, 2016, Extra City, Antwerp and Follies of Youth, Hepworth Wakefield Gallery, Yorkshire, 2015.
www.ruthelyons.com
Kunstverein Aughrim’s ongoing collaboration with Ruth E Lyons is supported by The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon and by Wicklow County Arts Office through the annual Strategic Project Award Scheme.