Event Details
Dates
05/03/2009 – 05/03/2009
Aideen Barry
‘Hypothetical evolutions of [an] other’
Galway Arts Centre
March 5 – April 9 2009
Opening 6pm Thursday 5th March
Galway Arts Centre is delighted to present ‘Hypothetical evolutions of [an] other’ an exhibition by Galway county based artist Aideen Barry. The exhibition will open on Thursday 5th March at 6pm and run until 9th April. Aideen is a graduate of GMIT and in 2006 completed her MA in Visual Arts Practices in IADT Dun Laoighaire. Barry has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions and was also co-curator of Tulca, Galway’s visual arts festival, in 2007.
In 2007 Aideen Barry received a ‘Project: New Work Award’ from the Arts Council, which enabled her to go to NASSA in Florida, USA, and experience zero-gravity in space. The resulting work examines the notion of how our current technology and space age advances, the influence of hysteria in post Celtic Tiger Ireland and our exposure to excessive use of chemicals have altered and will alter ourselves physically and psychological. These examinations are relayed in the artist’s use of multi media: Photography, Animation, Drawing, Embroidery, Film and Sculptural Objects. Aideen’s trip to NASA was documented by Chris Hurley from Cork Film Centre.
This most recent investigation is part of an ongoing exploration into the notion of Hysteria, examining the theories of Freud and Charcot. The artist also refers to Michel Foucault’s theory of the Heteratopic Space, the space that is “in-between” the real and the imagined world. The artist’s preoccupation with literature, scientific thought, engineering inventions and philosophy from the turn of the last century has led her directly to search for the new figure of gothic subversion in the contemporary Diaspora. For the artist the contemporary gothic can be seen in everyday, in the recent demise of Celtic Tiger Ireland, in housing estates and shopping centres. This interest in the Gothic of the now has provoked her interest into the evolution of the uncanny in a futuristic environment, specifically with the mutation of the Irish housewife into half cleaning/mechanical device and half human. Using Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ as a starting point, Barry explores the notion of the domestic monster, one we have created ourselves with our obsessive cleaning behaviours, our desire for domestic perfection and the altering of our DNA through the abuse of cleaning chemicals.
Artist Aideen Barry giving a talk on her exhibition ‘of Hypothetical Evolutions of [an]other’ in Galway Arts Centre, Wednesday 11th March 2009.
