OBJECTS AS BUOYS IN THE LIFE ACTED by Áine Mac Giolla Bhríde
objects as buoys in the life acted by Áine Mac Giolla Bhríde opened on 15 April and runs until 13 May 2023 at the Regional Cultural Centre in County Donegal. This marks the artist’s first solo exhibition in their hometown of Letterkenny. The exhibition, at once sculptural and personal, is composed of an assembly of objects, anchored temporarily in space. Building a self in the form of a room, piece by piece, this is an exhibition about the systems of understanding and modes of un/making with which we can engage.
I’m scrolling and scrolling through second-hand sites looking at what functions as a stand-in for me or anyone. It can be hard to know how the back of many of them look. I want to have a selection whose rears are as pleasing. Many of the designer brands have attended to this side. Like they’re more likely to be in large open spaces where one can openly walk around the set of curves, see it from all angles, circumnavigate it.
Many others are lazy about the back. They’re supposed to be squashed up against a wall anyway right.
I took the attempt at locating the self in an object to the skip today.
It had been stacked in the centre of my studio and I couldn’t bring myself to deal with it. A strong aversion that I had put down to laziness when in fact later I realised I kind of hated the thing. Too large, too puffy, old, worn and dirty. Glenn tried mercifully to avoid the dust which would wake him in the night in fits of sneezing if he happened to get a lungful of the stuff. We walked the sections up sets of stairs that clung to a large skip. A huge steel toothed roller on an extendable arm loomed down. We chucked them over the side, grateful to be rid of them, dusted ourselves off and went for coffee.
Áine Mac Giolla Bhríde is an Irish artist working in the field of sculpture. Their work makes manifest considerations of site and the situated body via staged sculptural arrangements. Recent solo and group exhibitions include From Here to There, at The Douglas Hyde Gallery; point of fold, at mother’s tankstation Dublin; Feeling of Knowing at The Complex Gallery; and a commissioned body of work, and/or land, for EVA International 2021/2020. Upcoming presentations include a solo show at Void, Derry; and commissioned work for Kunstverein Aughrim.
Kunstverein Aughrim’s ongoing collaboration with Áine Mac Giolla Bhríde is made possible with the support of the Arts Council.