Brittle to Look Back

This exhibition began with an examination of the spaces of the stilled construction site, the proposed architectural plan, and the infrastructural ruin. The work imagines future plans and architectural models as excavated ruins.

It draws on histories of infrastructural projects and transport networks like railways and canals in Ireland. The work explores processes of ruin, decay, corrosion, and regrowth. It critically examines narratives of linear progress, planning ideologies, and dichotomised understandings of the built environment and landscape.

These ideas are explored through installation, clay, steel, & printmaking. Wire, found materials, and fragments added to clay bodies play with constructed form and landscape. The work was produced through cyclical processes of visiting places, gathering, making, and drawing. The resulting objects and structures act as models, parts of construction, and fragments or ruins of spaces. The installation of the work explores makeshift assembly and precarious construction.

This work was made with the support of the Arts Council of Ireland, Fingal County Council, Fire Station Artist Studios, The National Sculpture Factory, and the Cork Printmakers.

Aideen Farrell is a Dublin-based sculptor and installation artist. She graduated from NCAD in 2017 with a BA in Fine Art Painting and Visual Culture. She is currently undertaking a MA in Fine art at TU Dublin and is also a member of A4 sounds in Dublin. Her work combines research and material practices, particularly drawing and making. She weighs fixed designs of architecture and urban planning against conditions of precarity and collapse.

Recent exhibitions include solo shows; A Weight of Windows at Pallas Projects/Studios in 2019 and Showroom Linenhall Arts Centre in 2018, and group shows; Halfway to Falling at the Lord Mayor’s Pavilion in 2021 and In Cahoots with the Earth, and The Stars are in the Earth at A4 Sounds in 2021 and 2022 respectively. She was awarded the Fingal County Council Artist Support Scheme 2018-22, the Arts Council’s Professional Development Award 2020, Agility Award 2021, and Visual Arts Bursary 2021. In 2022 she undertook a joint residency between the National Sculpture Factory and Cork Printmakers funded by the Arts Council Agility Award. She was awarded a Dublin City Council Residency at St Patrick’s Lodge 2018-2019 and Fire Station Artists’ Studios 2021 Sculpture Award.

Opening Times:
Monday – Friday 10:00 – 17:00
Saturday/Sunday/Bank Holidays 13:00 – 16:30