STUDIO AIDEEN BARRY

Limerick City Gallery of Art (LCGA) presented Aideen Barry’s solo exhibition By SLIGHT LIGAMENTS curated by one of Ireland's leading curatorial practitioners Sarah Searson in November 2021. The work was a cacophony of multimedia and challenging cutting edge technologies in digital animation and film. The work featuredseveral specially commissioned collaborations with artists, designers and craft workers. Barry’s approach has been to think about the various spaces in LCGA as a body of nervous systems. The title of the exhibition, By Slight Ligament, comes from Mary Shelly’s novel, Frankenstein,emphasizing the exhibition as a body of parts, stitched together through the collective talents of Barry and her many talented collaborators. Included are writer, Sinéad Gleeson; harpist, Aisling Lyons; composers and musicians, Fiona Shiel, Steve Shannon and Cathal Murphy; and award-winning Inuit performer RIIT. Barry has also commissioned work from designers & artists, Margaret O’ Connor, Tropical Popical and master carpenter, Charles Perpoil. The works took over the various spaces in the Gallery, alluding to our intense human vulnerability and disconnection as a society grappling with post-pandemic realities and environmental changes. Throughout the exhibition sound and imagery overwhelm the visitor; play with our senses, marking out connection, dislocation and our bodies in a changing world. Working across multiple sites of research, such as the Bunting Harp Collection archives, and with the Irish Traditional Music Archive and Music Network the exhibition refers to a collective state of denial, questioning a public’s aversion to acknowledging crisis, its impact and role in a changing socio-political cultures and widening global inequality At the heart of the exhibition is Oblivion/Seachmalltacht, which receives its premier in LCGA, a Irish Traditional Music Archive & Music Network, Bunting Commission. This is a spectacular performance, moving image and sound installation created by Barry in collaboration with internationally renowned Inuit Canadian singer and song writer RIIT, Irish harpist Aisling Lyons with costume design by Margaret O’ Connor.