INTERVAL VIII BY AILBHE NI BHRIAIN
A solo presentation by Ailbhe Ni Bhriain who is represented by Kerlin Gallery, Dublin is among the international avant-garde historical and contemporary artists at Offscreen Paris from October 16-20 at Grand Garage Haussmann. At Offscreen two large-scale Jacquard tapestries by Ni Bhriain titled Interval III and Interval VIII – woven with wool, cotton, silk and lurex – are on display. Originating in collage, they are a composite of fragments, brought together to create a visual world that is at once precise and enigmatic. Both works are underpinned by loose categories of imagery: early photographic portraiture, underground caves and architectural ruins. The formal construct of the group portrait, with its projection of status and stability, is punctured at once by the deep time of geological formations and the crumbling structures of the contemporary. The resulting scenes of threshold and collapse are inhabited by an unlikely cast of creatures – animals which thread an imagined line between present-day threats of extinction and ancient narratives of the underworld. Both tapestries belong to an ongoing body of work which also encompasses a forthcoming film titled The Dream Pool Intervals. Collectively these works seek to locate the looming consciousness of climate crisis within an odd, hallucinated world, where colonial and industrial legacies fuse with our most ancient storytelling and fears.