Artist: Ailbhe Ní Bhriain
Exhibition title: An Experiment with Time
Venue: Kunsthal Gent, Ghent, Belgium
Date: May 31 – December 31, 2024
Photography: ©Michiel Decleene / courtesy the artist and Kunsthal Gent
With ‘An Experiment with Time’ Irish artist Ailbhe Ní Bhriain (pronounced as ‘Alve Knee Vreen’) explores our current relationship with past and future, which has been deeply disrupted by the urgent climate threat, mass extinction and pandemic. Using live-filmed sequences and imagery generated by computer and artificial intelligence Ní Bhriain reveals an enigmatic world, redolent of the uncertainty, contradictions and fragility of our planet today.
Ailbhe Ní Bhriain draws us into a world of theatricality and disorientation in which the familiar is re-imagined in light of a destabilised future. A decommissioned medical site is submerged in water; a chameleon is the sole inhabitant of a museum of computing history; a brain-coral becomes the centre piece of an iconic cathedral. Throughout the exhibition, diverse locations, histories and systems of knowledge are mysteriously compressed and conflated. A portrayal of environmental aftermath emerges, weaving a dreamlike narrative around the constructs through which humans have sought to understand and control the world.
‘An Experiment with Time’ takes its title from a 1927 publication by the Irish-born popular scientist J.W. Dunne. This book outlined a belief system based on precognitive dreams – a theory of parallel timelines whereby dream narratives predict future events. Using CGI, collage, and assemblage, Ní Bhriain references Dunne’s text to explore our current relationship to both past and future, so profoundly unsettled and called into question by the threat of climate disaster. What results is an enigmatic visual vocabulary that connects to the uncertainty, contradiction and loss experienced in this time of crisis.
Ailbhe Ní Bhrian’s work will be shown in and around our new pavilion, KHG04, a fourth spatial intervention in our church hall by artist and architect Olivier Goethals.
Ailbhe Ní Bhriain
Born in County Clare in Ireland, Ailbhe Ní Bhriain studied at the Crawford College of Art & Design, Cork, the Royal College of Art, London and Kingston University, London, where she was awarded a PhD by practice in 2008. Her work has shown widely internationally, with exhibitions at Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin; Broad Museum, Michigan; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Hammer Museum, LA; Istanbul Modern, Turkey; and Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid among others.
Current exhibitions of her work include: The Narrow Gate of the Here and Now: Social Fabric, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; A Nation Under the Influence: Ireland at 100, Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris; The Space We Occupy, Irish Arts Centre, New York; Expanded, Graphic Studio Gallery, Dublin; and Mountain Language, Galway Arts Centre, Galway. In December 2021 her films were screened at The Kitchen, New York as part of Claire Chase’s Density 2036 project, and in Wilton Park, Dublin as part of an ongoing outdoor installation curated by RHA Gallery and Dublin City Council. In 2022 Ailbhe Ní Bhriain will exhibit as part of the 16th Lyon Biennale: The Manifesto of Fragility, curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath.
Public collections of her work include Crawford Art Gallery, Cork; Trinity College Dublin; The Arts Council of Ireland; and Office of Public Works, Ireland. Ailbhe Ní Bhriain is represented by domobaal gallery, London. She is based in Cork, Ireland.
