Tógaimid ár dteanga le carraigeacha [we build our language with rocks]

Kunstverein Aughrim presents Tógaimid ár dteanga le carraigeacha [we build our language with rocks] by Sarah Browne. The exhibition consists of a series of objects that act like index cards, referring to ecologies of knowledge and vocabularies of experience outside of themselves. The exhibition assembles material and linguistic artefacts sourced from the National Folklore Collection, the National Museum, and the National Library of Ireland, images that challenge straightforward description, and found objects that have been re-worked, stripped or re-skinned. These materials become touchstones for sensing embodied knowledge and the ways in which it can or cannot be expressed, related to, engaged with or shared.

As an artist Browne is invested in thinking through objects. In her studio practice, both things-in-the-world and sculptures are used as tools for touching abstract ideas and choreographing thought and action with others. Browne’s current research explores the sensory and political possibilities of minority language, vocabulary gaps, poetics and play.

Some of the questions shaping this new body of work found their origin in previous projects by the artist. Echo’s Bones (2022) was a film made in collaboration with a group of autistic young people. Chance conversations within the process led to Browne considering how a lack of access, literacy or fluency in a particular communication system ​(such as the Irish language) might result in an extinction of experience or absence of representation within that space. Processes of (self) description, perception and not-knowing were further pursued in Browne’s project Buttercup (2024). This experimental moving image memoir focused on describing a single photograph. The work integrated accessibility measures – such as captioning and audio description – as both practical and artistic devices. This approach produced simultaneous modes of transmission that in turn invite multiple registers of engagement and interpretation, creating an intense sensory experience within the formal parameters of a film.

The depth of nuances at play within the layers of Browne’s artwork find further articulation in Sarah Hayden’s long-form poem as if [...] wearing anklesocks. This textual response to Buttercup accompanied its presentation at SIRIUS, Cobh, County Cork, and now acts as a chapbook companion to this new exhibition of work at Kunstverein Aughrim.

Tógaimid ár dteanga le carraigeacha, the title of the exhibition, borrows from a quote by poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant, in the translator Betsy Wing’s introduction to Glissant’s Poetics of Relation. The playful and profound proposition 'Je bâtis a roches mon langage’ (I build my language with rocks) was collectivised and translated into Irish with the assistance of Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, Associate Professor in the School of Irish, Celtic Studies and Folklore at University College Dublin.

Our Winter Preview with Sarah Browne is on Saturday 14 December 2024. The event takes place from 11am to 3pm at Kunstverein Aughrim and other venues around the town.

About the artist:
Sarah Browne is an artist based in Ireland concerned with spoken and unspoken, bodily experiences of knowledge, labour and justice. Her practice involves sculpture, film, performance and publishing, often in collaboration with others. Recent public projects include Echo’s Bones (2022, commissioned by Fingal County Council); Public feeling (2019, commissioned by South Dublin County Council); and In the Shadow of the State (2016, with Jesse Jones: a site-specific cycle of workshops and performances in Derry, Liverpool, Dublin and London, commissioned by Create and Artangel). She has had solo exhibitions at Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh, County Cork; Marabouparken, Stockholm; Institute of Modern Art Brisbane; CCA Derry~Londonderry; Project Arts Centre, Dublin; Ikon, Birmingham and CAG, Vancouver. In 2020 she curated TULCA Festival of Visual Arts, Galway, with a project titled The Law is a White Dog. Significant group exhibitions Browne has participated in include Bergen Assembly (2019), Liverpool Biennial (2016) and the Irish Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009) with Gareth Kennedy and Kennedy Browne. She is associate artist with University College Dublin College of Social Sciences and Law.

Kunstverein Aughrim’s ongoing collaboration with Sarah Browne is made possible with the support of The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon.