Highlanes Municipal Art Gallery. Abigail O Brien: With Bread

Transcription

1 Highlanes Municipal Art Gallery Abigail O Brien: With Bread

2 Abigail O Brien With Bread 13 September 16 November 2013 Published by Highlanes Gallery, September 2013, in an edition of 1,000 Exhibition Sponsorship: McCloskey s Bakery, Drogheda, Traditional Artisan Bakery and home of Spiegel s Bagels and Skinny s has generously sponsored the exhibition, catalogue and tour. As well as the ongoing financial support of the Arts Council and Drogheda Borough Council, the project was also awarded a special Arts Council Touring Grant. Exhibition Partners: The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim Dates: 7 February 5 April, 2014 Limerick City Gallery of Art, Limerick Dates: January 2015 Design: Fiona O Reilly, On the Dot Design Print: Nicholson & Bass Highlanes Municipal Art Gallery Laurence Street Drogheda Co. Louth Ireland T (0) F (0) W. E. info@highlanes.ie ISBN: Highlanes Gallery, the authors and the artist British Library Cataloguing in Publication data available. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without first seeking the written permission of the copyright owners and of the publishers. 2 Contents Foreword: Aoife Ruane, Curator/Director 4 With Bread: keeping company with Abigail O Brien, Dr Medb Ruane 6 Bread and Alchemy, Theo Dorgan 8 Index of Images 65 Drogheda Municipal Art Collection 72 Artist s Acknowledgements 74 Artist s CV 76 3

3 Foreword Wherefore do ye spend money on that which is not bread?... Eat that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. -Isaiah 55:2 Abigail O Brien was born in Dublin in She studied fine art as a mature student, graduating in 1998 from the National College of Art and Design (NCAD), Dublin. Since then her work has earned numerous awards and accolades, and she has exhibited consistently both in and outside Ireland over the last two decades. To the viewer, the images cannot be obviously linked with any particular bakery. Each is named after an artist, a female artist, O Brien says because the image suggests something to me about their work. The second element is the bread sculptures - ethnic breads that have been put through a process of firing and silvering, their nourishing and life-giving properties now suspended forever. Their titles refer to monetary currency - Peso, Euro, and Pound - and as objects of beauty O Brien believes they still have currency and may even have value in their metal properties. Bakery, Drogheda, through baker and managing director Patrick McCloskey. In a highly competitive and difficult market we are grateful for his belief in the project and its value. Thanks to Drogheda & District Chamber colleague and current, President Simon McCormack who made the key initial introductions. O Brien s work primarily foregrounds her identity as a woman. Belgian philosopher Luce Irigaray has said that one must assume the feminine role deliberately (Jung, Irigaray, Individuation: Philosophy, Analytical Psychology, and the Question of the Feminine, 2008), in the struggle to find authentically female ways of speaking, dreaming and desiring that are free from male-centeredness. O Brien s practice also explores culture and everyday rituals, encompassing life, death, love, birth and immortality. With Bread is an exhibition of photographs, sculpture/installation, and video by artist Abigail O Brien, her first solo museum exhibition and monograph in Ireland since The exhibition continues a strand of solo shows for Highlanes Gallery including Citizen: Anthony Haughey (2013); I am here; you are there: Kate Byrne (2013); Sarah Browne: Second Burial at Le Blanc (2012); Samuel Walsh: The Coercion of Substance (2012); Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh (2011); Ten Miles Round: Jackie Nickerson (2010); Conflicting Account: Paul Seawright (2010); Shuffle: Richard Gorman (2010); and Eclipse of a Title: Diana Copperwhite (2008). While bread and the craft of making it are nearly as old as civilisation itself, Pain au levain was the first leavened bread, probably discovered in Egypt six thousand years ago. Abigail O Brien s interest in bread, its elemental properties, the magical process that takes place in its making, its centrality in human daily life across race and culture and religion, as well as its familial, social and cultural importance (historically through the female), and its rich symbolism, spans some twenty years. An artist I have long admired, I first became aware of O Brien s practice while working at the Irish Museum of Modern art, when The Last Supper (1995), one of her most important works was acquired to the Collection. When I began working at Highlanes Gallery in 2007, O Brien had become resident in Co. Louth and accepted an invitation to join the Board of the gallery, where she played a central role over a five year term. Her appointment as the first female Secretary of the RHA (Royal Hibernian Academy) in 2012 signalled the end of her time on Highlanes Board. The third and final element is a video projection titled Grande Dame, a three minute piece capturing in slow motion a levain or sourdough starter at the moment of rising. For O Brien, this represents fecundity and fertility. The exhibition has been conceived not only for Highlanes Gallery, but for two other partner venues, The Dock in Carrick-on-Shannon, and Limerick City Gallery of Art, both of which it will tour to in the coming eighteen months. We are grateful to curator/ director s Siobhan O Malley and Helen Carey and anticipate interesting exhibitions, as well as great discussion and engagement in their sites and with those who come to the exhibition. There are two outstanding essays in the catalogue from writer and psychoanalytic practitioner Dr Medb Ruane and poet, novelist and prose writer Theo Dorgan. Sincere thanks to both writers for their time and creativity in the texts. Thanks also to journalist and writer Susan McKay for agreeing to open the exhibition. The team at Highlanes Gallery are central to the development, installation, communication and engagement of, and with this exhibition. I would like to thank Siobhan Burke, Patrick Casey, Ian Hart, Siobhan Murphy and Hilary Kelly, and the team of invigilators and installation crew for their ongoing commitment and enthusiasm. Primary school teacher Ann Burke has generously given of her time and advised on elements of our Primary School Programme and the school curriculum for this exhibition. Thanks also to Highlanes Gallery Board, in particular Chairman, Kevin McAllister and Alison Lyons for their steadfast and strategic support for the work of Highlanes Gallery. The work for this exhibition has developed and continued out of an earlier exploration Kitchen Pieces Confession and Communion (1998), from the exhibition The Seven Sacraments, a major body of work which was created by her over eight years ( ). However, a mutual friend, artist Amanda Coogan prompted a suggestion of a future collaboration and exhibition; Abigail had been already working on this and another body of work when I approached her to make an exhibition for Highanes Gallery and she willingly agreed. With Bread includes three elements. The first is a series of framed photographs which have been taken in four bakeries in Ireland, McCloskey s Bakery, Drogheda; Barron s Bakery, Waterford; the Bretzel Bakery, and Il Valentino Bakery, both in Dublin. As well as ongoing funding from Drogheda Borough Council and the Arts Council, the project was awarded an Arts Council Touring Grant early in 2013, which has enabled the large format exhibition concept, the national tour, this catalogue, and accompanying public programme. We acknowledge this critical and special financial commitment. In tandem with this extra funding, we have been fortuitous in securing significant sponsorship for all elements of the exhibition from McCloskey s Traditional and Artisan Finally, there would be nothing without the work of the artist. Abigail O Brien is one of the most important visual artists working in Ireland today. The value of her work is immeasurable as is her ability to deliver to the highest standard even under the most challenging and difficult circumstances. Abigail is an inspiration; she is a true alchemist, and it s been a pleasure working with her. Aoife Ruane, Director, Highlanes Galler 4 5

4 With Bread: keeping company with Abigail O Brien Dr Medb Ruane How do you make air stand up? In Abigail O Brien s With Bread, you create objects and images to track how air mutates in different circumstances. Drape it with yeast, flour and water and it becomes bread, the stuff we eat, share and make dreams of. Clad it in silver and the dough is worth a fortune. O Brien s forensic journeys into everyday things picture ordinary materials serving something momentous. Her practice details the minutiae and lived experience of what were once called sacred events. The immediately post-christian context in which she operates could muddy the strategic aspects of her work but rather than being a religious investigation, her eye is on the symbolic moments religion - and art - have often tried to articulate. At base, it is about bread making as a ritual that crosses cultures, peoples and millennia. Lack of bread provokes hunger, famine, death. Too much enables cruelty and greed. But bread is also about nourishing and loving, as it circulates from hand to oven and from table to mouth and belly. Love comes from the world of yum-yum, Lacan believed (Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, 1964). Understood as food and as money, bread evokes notions of exchange and currency in human relationships and via the social justices/injustices flowing from global markets. Less tangibly, it traces the body s interventions on natural materials and then metaphorises the magic of making air stand up into a discourse about art and transformation. The emphasis on lived experience gives the work a conceptual groundedness derived in parts from feminist art practice, with its early manifesto that the personal is the political, and its quest to explore the everyday s rich terrains. No truck is held with hierarchies or notions of greatness, individualism and exceptionalism. It s not about bread; it s about what you do with it. The homage - femmage, perhaps - quits the slowly-eroding exceptionalist world of the capital -A artist - what Kiki Smith called white, male, power, money - by honouring forty-two female co-workers of various ethnic backgrounds, including the unstoppable Grande Dame. This low-key act of commemoration mirrors the artist s continuous references to friends and associates throughout her practice but also, pointedly, rejects the use of alibis by portraying people as agents, not as actors. With, the other key word in the exhibition s title, suggests company (Latin: cum panis), companionship, questions of relating and how to nourish them. This relationality is not solely aesthetic, not about soft-focus aspirationalism or big hug ethics. Stark global change ecologically and economically make urgent a suite of issues, from the place of the artisan and artist to issues of hoarding/distributing assets and of nourishing those who are struggling with nothing and not-enough. Philosopher Rosie Braidotti argues that the challenge is to promote affirmative politics which entail the creation of sustainable alternatives geared to the construction of social horizons of hope because they critique technological determinism at the level of representation (Powers of Affirmation, 2011: 267). So, wheat becomes dough, air stands up and, in parallel translations, is given the status of art, whatever that is, by transforming into photograph and sculpture. Shiny, beautiful objects cast from precious metals translate the artisans work into gorgeous artefacts that won t rot or endure the messiness W.B. Yeats aimed to flee when, yearning for eternity, he imagined a hammered gold bird cast by Grecian goldsmiths who would sing forever because it was outside time (Sailing to Byzantium, The Tower, 1928). Here, bread becomes a silvered bullion whispering, by the way, back to that silver nitrate compound used in early photography. When childrens empty bellies don t come first, this is a more desirable symbol of wealth than naked dough but there s a cost. The nutritive and relational are stripped away in a lethal contrast that shows the high stakes between immortality and death. The global question of how to live together now returns with a vengeance. Baptism (1995/6), her debut series, examined a child s symbolic welcoming into family and community with cut-glass precision - a miniature pram filled with salt spoke to people s hopes and wishes, using ancient alchemical elements. The Seven Sacraments project ( ) looked at such moments through the rituals and utensils associated with them, through people attending and food they prepared. Sometimes her palette used trinkets, other times, such as from The Ophelia Room (2000), steel and aluminium surfaces glittered with cold beauty, in Dublin s morgue. Grande Dame (2013) shows a yeasty dough bubbling round and overflowing a plain glass jar, telling a simple story of material alchemy but also showing what happens when there s no limit or point of no return. Creativity expands without a brake, in mathematician Fernando Zalamea s theory of change and decay as parallel orientations (Passages of Proteus, 2011), here synchronised through human eye and hand. O Brien nails down these narratives of relationality and interconnectedness through a pattern of naming that stitches the discourse of art and transformation into a discourse about women artists and symbolic recognition. While the work opens up conversations from art and artisanship to science and technology, the titles pinpoint the imaginative milieu in which it breathes. Most of the artists made their names outside the Academy or so-called Great Tradition by positioning themselves as nomads exploring film, video, photography, sound, performance, installation and architecture, much as O Brien does. The images sheer polish embodied a sense of the still life tradition with its uncompromising stress on perfection, here with a twist. The tradition s impeccablywrought, immaculate and unsullied order was a defence against mortality, against what Samuel Beckett called unrelieved viciousness and the unpredictability that living and dying entails (Dante Bruno. Vico.. Joyce, Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress, 1929). In With Bread, however, O Brien unravels those stark oppositions of order/disorder, beauty/ugliness, value/ worthlessness by working through a politics of process as profound continuity, visualised through creation, change and decay. Photographs with intriguing titles play with tightly-contained images of dough that weirdly seeps or stains, yielding surfaces livid and knotted as flesh, sometimes looking amusingly erotic or downright repellent. The material squats. Human hands knead it into vernacular forms from the artist s experience. Here is Waterford blaa, a fluffy bread, here s turnover with a big crust, there are bread rolls, pretzels, a friend s sourdough with his proving basket, French fougasse baked as a Christmas treat, and her mother s brown bread, whose never-quite-the-same taste is part of the artist s family traditions. Like Proust s remembered madeleines, they function in deeply personal ways. Dr Medb Ruane is a writer and psychoanalytic practitioner, based in Dublin. She has written as a columnist with The Sunday Times, The Irish Times, and The Irish Independent, and as a critic in many catalogues and journals. She serves on the Mental Health Tribunals. Her current research is on the pathways between psychoanalytic, literary and visual cultures. Her latest publication appears in Theory on the Edge: Irish Studies and the Politics of Sexual Difference, ed. Giffney and Sholdice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). 6 7

5 Bread and Alchemy Theo Dorgan What do we think of, nowadays, when we think of alchemy? In an age of information overload, accustomed as we are to requiring quick answers to all questions, most people would rattle off something along the lines of proto-science, the transmutation of base metals into gold and be content that they had exhausted the subject. The commodification of knowledge, resting as it does on the cursed proposition that time is money, demands of us that we confront questions now so as, essentially, to dismiss them with all possible speed. There is an unvoiced but everywhere dominant belief that time spent in reflection, in patient inquiry, on the acquisition of knowledge beyond the immediate and superficial, is somehow time wasted, and that when we spend time on such matters, someone, somewhere, must suffer unforgivable financial loss. Information, easily acquired, supersedes knowledge, not least because the acquisition of knowledge requires study, the investment of attention and time. And, to invoke another cliché, we have become notoriously time-poor. but unnoticed, as the air is to humans and other mammals, as the sea is to fish. Yet consider, as Abigail invites us to do, the mystery of bread, how two inert substances, milled grain and water, transmute and transform when a third element, yeast, is introduced. Consider the role of the observant mind in this process, as in who it was first noticed that a + b in the presence of c produces d. Consider how this process has been handed down, how it has varied and modified from one society to another, one epoch to the next, how what is discovered in one place is introduced, deliberately or by chance, into another place. Consider the artfulness of the baker, consider how two people using the same ingredients, even the same mixing bowls and ovens, will produce two different breads. Consider the great gulf fixed between breads produced by the schooled human hand and the soulless, tasteless products of the machine bakeries. Consider the presence of bread in our art, philosophy and common speech as a source of metaphor, as a guide to those leaps of imagination that drive us - and consider, too, the role bread and grain has played in our wars and in our politics, in the self-sufficiency of isolated homes and in the growth of villages, then towns and cities whose first nucleus, always and everywhere, is the bakery. All that we say of alchemy, we can say of art. A number of elements in this exhibition make the identification explicit: you can observe the weirdly impressive business of yeast working through dough in a series of photographs that arrest the process, that offer us a literal snapshot of a complex chemical interaction at work. You can observe the process captured as it occurs in the flow of time. You can claim time for yourself to allow the rich metaphorical hinterland of the mystery grow in your own mind and in your own attention. And you can consider what it might mean, when you see bread here transmuted, transformed in the alchemical process of casting, into precious metal. In this latter case you might find yourself thinking of Midas, of how all that he touched turned to gold you may even catch your mind leaping, as mine did when I heard that story first as a child, to thoughts of how splendidly rich you would be if everything you touched turned to precious metal - before being brought up short by the simple realisation that you would, of course, very soon starve to death. As indeed, we would very soon starve to death if it were not for our bakers and our artists. When Abigail offers the individual photographs in this exhibition as a gesture of homage to individual women artists she is making this connection plain, and yet at the same time elusive, tantalising, as metaphors and truths should be. You do not need to know the work of, say, Dorothy Cross, Louise Bourgeois, Amanda Coogan, Tacita Dean or any of these other dedicatees in order to see what is in front of you, nor yet to grasp the connection between bread dough observed and the work of one of these artists - but you may be inspired to seek their work out, and perhaps even to revisit O Brien s work then, to see if you can imagine for yourself what it was in each individual photograph that called to her mind the work of this artist or that. You are invited, in other words, to join in the alchemy of mind working with mind, attention working with attention in the boundless unfolding of human curiosity, the ceaseless working of our common imagination as we strive to understand this life of ours. The Sufis say that the presence of enlightened souls acts in a given society as a kind of yeast. Enlightenment, its humble pursuit through work, is the proper business of the artist and an end result of art; it is also a gift that, like bread, acquires its deepest and truest meaning when it is shared. We are invited here to become alchemists of ourselves, to take our share of what alchemists have always and everywhere called, simply, the great work. Dublin Theo Dorgan is a poet, novelist and prose writer. He is a member of Aosdána. Part of the business of art in our time is to refuse this glib dismissiveness, this knowingness that supersedes knowledge, and Abigail s exhibition is, in large part, an attempt to challenge this headlong flight into assumptions so devoid of content that they amount to no more than lazy dismissals. She has chosen to concentrate her attention, and therefore ours if we agree, on the simplest of alchemical processes, the intriguing transmutation of grain and water into the bread that for much of our history on the planet has been humanity s single most sustaining food. Literally, the staff of life. Breadmaking is an art that has been practiced for millennia, an art that by virtue of its very pervasiveness has become all Art, chemistry, tradition and innovation, talent and learning, all these and more are involved in the alchemy of bread. Alchemy is a tradition with an impressive lineage, as rooted in philosophy as it is in the practical manipulation of the material world. It rests on a single basic assumption, that all manifestations of what we might call the life force are interwoven one with another, that this world in which we find ourselves is a plenum in which psyche, body and mind - and soul, if you are prepared to countenance the term - are mutually interdependent. 8 9

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33 Index of images Shirin Neshat front cover Grande Dame pg 13 Eva Hesse pg 14 Helen Chadwick pg 15 Dorothea Lange pg 16 Kathy Prendergast pg 17 Cindy Sherman pg 18 Alice Maher pg

34 Méret Oppenheim pg 20 Marina Abramovic pg 21 Mary A. Kelly pg 22 Kathe Kollwitz pg 23 Jenny Saville pg 28 Paula Rego pg 29 Christine Borland pg 30 Marie-Jo Lafontaine pg 31 Tracey Emin pg 24 Frida Kahlo pg 25 Judy Chicago pg 26 Louise Bourgeois pg 27 Sarah Lucas pg 32 Rebecca Horn pg Pula pg Lek pg

35 3,000 Shekels pg Balboa each pg Dinar pg Euro pg 39 Nan Goldin pg 44 Beverly Semmes pg 45 Maya Lin pg 46 Mona Hatoum pg x 88 cm 120 x 88 cm 7 Kopeck & 90 Santeem pg Krone pg 41 Kara Walker pg 42 Siobhán Hapaska pg 43 Barbara Kruger pg 48 Amand Coogan pg 49 Tacita Dean pg 50 Rebecca Horn pg x 88 cm 120 x 88 cm 68 69

36 Mary Kelly pg 52 Shadi Ghadirian pg 53 Grande Dame Moving Image pg Video Rachel Whiteread pg 56 Camille Souter pg 61 Vivienne Roche pg 62 Janet Mullarney pg x 88 cm Georgia O Keeffe pg 57 Dorothy Cross pg 58 Kiki Smith pg 59 Alanna O Kelly pg

37 Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda Municipal Art Collection The Drogheda Municipal Art Gallery was founded by the late Bea Orpen, HRHA and her husband CEF (Terry) Trench together with the Municipal Art Gallery and Museum Committee in the mid-1940s. The collection dates from the middle of the eighteenth century and is housed at the gallery in former Franciscan Friary Church on Laurence Street, Drogheda. Benefactors Anglo Printers Dónall Curtin Drogheda Grammar School Drogheda & District Chamber of Commerce Highlanes Gallery Curator/Director: Aoife Ruane; Operations and Security Manager: Patrick Casey; Exhibitions and Installation Officer: Ian Hart; Accounts and Administration: Siobhan Burke; Duty Officer/Reception: Siobhan Murphy; Duty Officer/Public Opened in 2006, Highlanes Gallery received funding from Drogheda Borough Council, Louth County Council, and the project was part-funded by the European Union through the Interreg IIIA Programme managed for the Special EU Programmes Body Artists represented in the Collection Joan Mary Bloxam, Muriel Brandt, Rene Brault, Thomas Brezing, Elaine Byrne, Erica Il Cane, John Cassidy, Richard Caulfield, Simon Coleman, Helen Colvill, Sylvia Cooke- Collis, Diana Copperwhite, James Humbert Craig, John Crampton Walker, Gerard Dillon, Kitty Elliott, Beatrice Elvery, Laurence Fagan, Pat Griffith, May Guinness, Brian Hegarty, Letitia Hamilton, Jack P. Hanlon, Michael Healy, Grace Henry, Nathaniel Hill, Charles Holroyd, Evie Hone, Mainie Jellett, John F. Kelly, Gereon Krebber, Dany Lartigue, Marianne Lucy Le Poer Trench William, John Leech, L.S. Lowry, Thomas Markey, Clare Marsh, Ferenc Martyn, Pamela Matthews, Richard Moore, James McNeill Whistler, William Mulready, Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh, Jackie Nickerson, Bea Orpen, Andrew O Connor, Anderson Paisley, Mervyn Peake, Sarah Purser, Nano Reid, Gabriele Riccierdelli, Hilda Roberts, Henry Roper-Curzon, George William Russell, Tasmin Snow, Mary Swanzy, Armelle Skatulski, Charles Tyrrell and Herbert Webb. Sheelagh Duff Michael Flanagan, Rennicks Sign Manufacturing Mary Fay Bernard Gogarty Brian Hillen-Moore Niall & Valerie Lund Lorcan Lyons & Associates, Architects Peter Lyons Alison Lyons Kevin McAllister Caroline McBride Dr B. O Connell Dr Conor O Shea and Family Scoil Bhríde N.S., Bóthar Brugha,Drogheda Programmes: Hilary Kelly; Housekeeping: Myroslava Bodgan *Building Maintenance: Frank Curran *Gallery Invigilators: Gerry Kierans, Ursula McCloskey, Irene Nelson, Laura Gramzow, Joseph Flanagan, Andrew Brady Highlanes Gallery is supported by *FÁS Community Employment Project through Millmount Cultural Development Services Board of Management Chairman: Kevin McAllister Board: Seán Cotter, Kieran Lawless, Alison Lyons, Joan Martin, Róisín McAuley, James McKevitt, Sarah O Hagan, Fr. Ailbe Ó Murchú, Paul Smyth, Brona O Reilly Board of Directors Chairman: Joan Martin Board: Brian Harten, Kieran Lawless, Róisín McAuley, Joseph by East Border Region Interreg IIIA Partnership, the International Fund for Ireland, and Louth County Council LED Task Force under EU Peace II Programme and partfinanced by The Irish Government under The National Development Plan. Highlanes Gallery and F.E. McWilliam Gallery & Studio, Banbridge in Co. Down were developed together through the Intereg IIIA Programme, and continue to share exhibitions and resources. Patrons The Family of Bea Orpen and CEF (Terry) Trench, Founders of the Drogheda Municipal Art Collection Brendan and Bernadine McDonald Sacred Heart Secondary School, Drogheda Smyth & Son Solicitors Paul Smyth Margaret Startup Patrick Walsh McGuinness, Brona O Reilly 72 73

38 Artist s Acknowledgements Every project has to have a good leader and in this regard I would like to thank Aoife Ruane, Curator and Director of Highlanes Gallery, for her vision, constant commitment and untiring encouragement. To all the staff of Highlanes Gallery for your enthusiasm, especially Siobhan Burke, Siobhan Murphy, Patrick Casey and Hilary Kelly, and a special thank you to the technical team for your careful installation of the work, led by Ian Hart. Thank you to the Board of Highlanes Gallery especially Kevin McAllister and Alison Lyons for their stellar support. Warm thanks to Helen Carey at Limerick City Gallery of Art, and Siobhan O Malley at The Dock. I am thrilled to be working with you both. Thank you to the bakers I went to visit in order to make my photographs. I had no idea what to expect and had great fun in the process. Barron s is the oldest bakery in Ireland and Esther Barron and Joe Prendergast were hugely hospitable and dare I say it, warm as toast. I spent many engrossing evenings in the artisan bakery of Owen and Valentina Doorley at Grand Canal Quay, Dublin. Another landmark bakery is the Breztel in Portobello, Dublin and a special thank you to William Despard and all the bakers there for your time and support. Last but not least, I would like to thank Patrick McCloskey at McCloskey s Traditional Artisan Bakery, Drogheda for not alone giving me access to his beautiful bakery but for his very generous sponsorship of the show. Home baking is a wonderful skill and gift to those of us around you. Thank you to my mother Iris O Brien for teaching me how, and to Elaine and Vincent Hartigan for continuing the lessons. A very warm embrace to Medb Ruane and Theo Dorgan for the great essays which are insightful, thoughtful and most importantly very readable. A project like this has had the support and assistance of many people in order to be realised. I am very grateful to everyone who took part in this process. A big thank you to Mark Paisley in Fire for the carefully produced prints, and to Ciara Gallagher for extra assistance during the silly season. Mathew Peck at BLOC sourced the frames, and with Stephen Healy did a beautiful job, many thanks. Thank you also to Rico Slabozcs Horwath for your help moving the bread sculptures up and down to Dundalk. Not forgetting Sean Magennis for all his help with the props. In terms of the sculptures, thank you to Leo Higgins at CAST and to his super craftspeople, Emer Byrne and Ray Delaney. Michael Scott did the silver plating and I would like to thank him for his commitment and tireless efforts on my behalf. Thank you to Barry Lynch for your patient and careful edit of the Grande Dame video. I am very grateful to Fiona O Reilly at On the Dot Design for her sensitive design of this book. Also, many thanks to Lar Thompson for tweaking some of the sculpture images. Thank you to Don Hawthorn and the team at the specialist printers Nicholson & Bass for the care and time they have given this project. The questions that arise during the making of the work are very important and sometimes more interesting than my answers. In this regard I would like to mention Mary A. Kelly, David Galloway and Noel Kelly for your participation and for asking the questions. Thanks to Richard Moore for connecting me to Fr Joe of St. Mary s Parish Church, who, together with Sacristan Frankie Taaffe facilitated access to the church bells, and to Liam Denning for spraying the tables at short notice. Thank you to the PR team of Sinead Doherty and Gerry Lundberg for putting the word out. I am also very grateful to the Arts Council of Ireland for the additional financial support of the With Bread exhibition and national tour. A special thanks also to my family for making me laugh and reducing the stress. Larry gets a big mention here! My biggest thanks goes to Hugh Bradley, my Darling Man, for his unerring generosity and huge support throughout this process. His belief in my work is soul food. With Bread is for you. Abigail O Brien 74 75

39 Abigail O Brien Solo Exhibitions 2015 With Bread Limerick City Gallery of Art, spring 2014 With Bread The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon, 7 February 5 April 2013 With Bread Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda, Co. Louth, 13 September - 16 November 2012 Air Fix Days Peppercanister Gallery, Dublin, October 2011 Temperance RHA, Royal Hibernian Academy, Gallagher Gallery, Foyer, Dublin, January April 2010 Temperance Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer, Düsseldorf 2009 Temperance 2009, Letterkenny Municipal Arts Centre, Co. Donegal 2008 Bella 2007 Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer, Düsseldorf, Germany 2007 Bella Rubicon Gallery, Dublin 2006 Confirmation- Martha s Cloth 2004, Gallerie Bugdahn und Kaimer, Düsseldorf, Germany 2005 Fortitude John David Mooney Foundation, Chicago Garden Heaven - Holy Orders ( ) Centre Culture Irlandais, Paris, France The Seven Sacraments ( ) RHA, Royal Hibernian Academy, Gallagher Gallery, Dublin Vita Activa Rubicon Gallery, Dublin 2004 The Seven Sacraments ( ) Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany The Seven Sacraments ( ) Kunstverein, Lingen, Germany 2003 The Rag Tree Series Rubicon Gallery, Dublin The Rag Tree Series Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer, Düsseldorf, Germany 2001 How to Butterfly a leg of Lamb a collaboration with Mary Kelly, Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer, Düsseldorf, Germany 2000 from The Ophelia Room - Extreme Unction Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer, Düsseldorf, Germany from Baptism Sculpture Court, Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh, Scotland How to Butterfly a leg of Lamb a collaboration with Mary Kelly, Edinburgh Arts Festival 1999 Kitchen Pieces - Confession and Communion Galerie Stadtpark, Krems, Austria How to Butterfly a Leg of Lamb, a collaboration with Mary Kelly, The Concourse, Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council, County Dublin 1998 Kitchen Pieces - Confession and Communion Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer, Düsseldorf, Germany 1996 Baptism Old Museum Arts Centre, Belfast, Northern Ireland Man Eating Cream Bun installation, Habitat, Dublin Baptism Häagen Dazs/Temple Bar Gallery (Solo Award) Dublin Group Exhibitions 2013 RHA Annual Exhibition RHA, Royal Hibernian Academy, Gallagher Gallery, Dublin, May - August Janus Peppercanister Gallery, Dublin, 17 January 9 February Handicraft. Materials and Symbolism Museum Kunst der Westküste, Alkersum/Föhr, Germany, March :42 The Cable Factory, Kaapelitehtaan Valssaamossa, Helsinki, 9-24 March 7:42 Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda, Co. Louth, Ireland May-September Ateliers und Kitchen, Laboratories of the Senses Martha Herford, Herford, Germany, May -September RHA Annual Exhibition Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, May September Kinsale Arts Festival July 2011 Apertures and Anxieties - artists celebrate 300 years of Trinity College School of Medicine, RHA, Royal Hibernian Academy, Gallagher Gallery, Dublin, 15 November -21 December Christmas Show ArtCatto Gallery, Loule, Portugal, 10 December - January (2012) Christmas Show Solomon Fine Art Gallery, Dublin, 1 December - January :42, Irish Contemporary Art Lapua Museum of Art, Lapua Finland. Group exhibition with Mary Kelly, Seán Cotter and Thomas Brezing Christmas Group Show Solomon Fine Art Gallery, Dublin, November - December Still Peppercanister Gallery, Dublin, September Cast 25 James Wray Gallery, Belfast, 1-26 July Cast 25 Solomon Gallery, Dublin, May Altered Images in association with the Irish Museum of Modern Art, IMMA, Letterkenny Regional Cultural Centre, Co. Donegal, 17 May - 15 June 181st RHA Annual Exhibition Ely Place, Dublin, 24 May - 30 July Three Colours / Red a collaboration with Mary Kelly, SOMA Contemporary, Waterford, April - May Altered Images Crawford Art gallery, Cork, 14 February - 29 April Children get choosy with IMMA Wexford Arts Centre 22 March - 9 April 2010 Summer Interval 10 Gallerie Bugdahn und Kaimer, Düsseldorf, Germany Altered Images Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, June - August Sacred Dock Off-site, Enniskillen, Curator Linda Shevlin, June - July Let them Luv Cake Cake Contemporary, Dublin, March 2010 Arts The Curragh Army Camp, Co. Kildare Altered Images County Museum, Clonmel, Co. Tipperary, in association with the Irish Museum of Modern Art, IMMA, 19 June 5 August Another Island, Contemporary Irish Art The American Historical Society, New York, March 2008 Summer Interval 08 Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer, Düsseldorf, Germany RHA 178th Annual Exhibition, RHA, Royal Hibernian Academy, Gallagher Gallery, Dublin, February Obra Nabarmenenak /Obras Fundamentals Sala Kubo-Kutxa, San Sebastian, Spain, October January RHA 177th Annual Exhibition, RHA, Royal Hibernian Academy, Gallagher Gallery, Dublin Gestures of Infinity Kultutzentrum bei den Minoriten, Graz, Austria 2006 Einfach So Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer, Düsseldorf, Germany RHA 176th Annual Exhibition (invited artist) RHA, Royal Hibernian Academy, Gallagher Gallery, Dublin Ten Years in the Making an Exhibition of Art from the State Buildings, , Farmleigh, Dublin National Self-Portrait Collection University of Limerick, Limerick Pulse Contemporary Art Fair New York, USA Art Rotterdam Holland, Netherlands 2005 Happy Holiday Rubicon Gallery, Dublin Bread Matters West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen, Co. Cork The Eye of The Storm IMMA Collection, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin 2004 Tir na nóg New works from the IMMA Collection, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin Banquet Exhibition RHA, Royal Hibernian Academy, Gallagher Gallery, Dublin From a Collection - For a Collection Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer, Düsseldorf, Germany In the time of Shaking Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin Art Brussels, Paris Photo. Fiac Paris, Art Cologne 2003 Paris Photo Paris, France Child in Time The Gemeentemuseum, Helmond, Holland Art Cologne, Basil Art Forum 76 77

40 Random Access Video Training Symposium, Sculptors Society Ireland, 1998 Some Trees published by Paul Andriesse for the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin 2004 Lerse Kunst uit de Collectie van het Museum Modern Art Te Dublin Stedelijk Museum, Belgium Stories Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany Paris Photo, Basil Art Forum, and Art Cologne 2001 From the Poetic to the Political Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin Zwischenraum # 4 Arbeiten mit Fotografie Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer, Düsseldorf, Germany Basil Art Forum, Art Cologne 2000 Series Elke Dröscher Galerie, Hamburg, Germany Art Cologne, Basil Art Forum Der Monokulare Blick Kunstverein Lingen, Lingen, Germany Zwischen Raum Galerie Seitz und Partner, Wielandstr, Berlin, Germany Zwischenraum # Editionen und Multiples Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer, Düsseldorf, Germany Unschärferelation Kunstverein Freiburg im Marienbad, Germany /Travelling, tour to Kunstmuseum Heidenheim and Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken 1999 Irish Art Now: From the Poetic to the Political, travelling U.S. exhibition, organised by I.C.I. New York and I.M.M.A. Dublin Silent Presence: Contemporary Still-Life Photography Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden- Baden and Bielefelder Kunstverein (2000) The Challenge of Power Limerick City Gallery, Limerick, November Berlin Art Forum, Basil Art Forum Perspective 99 Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast EV+A 99 Limerick City Gallery, Limerick Les Fleur du Mal Galerie Seitz von Werder, Wielandstr.34, Berlin, Germany EV+A 98 Limerick City Gallery of Art, Limerick Art Forum, Berlin Novisimos, Cortometrajes Mexicanos, Recientes en Cine y Video Sala Luis Buñuel CCC/Centro Nacional de las Artes, Mexico, a collaboration with Javier de la Garza Passport Exchange; (Ex) Change National Polish Museum of Contemporary Art, Zacheta, Warsaw, Poland N.C.A.D. Postgraduate Show Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane, Dublin, June 1997 Passport Exchange (Ex) Change, Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin Banquet Exhibition RHA, Royal Hibernian Academy, Gallagher Gallery, Dublin Figuration, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin 1996 Waiting Spaces Sheriff Street Post Office, site-specific work, Dublin Oriel Mostyn Open Llandudno, Wales Iontas Sligo, travelling to Dublin, Limerick and Derry Awards Arts Council of Ireland, Touring Grant (With Bread, Highlanes Gallery on tour) Arts Bursary, Louth County Council (Create Louth) 2010 Elected Full Member Royal Hibernian Academy, Ireland 2010 Culture Ireland Exhibition Bursary 2005 /2008 The Solomon Sculpture Prize, 2008 Public Art Award, Donegal County Council, 2007/2008 Associate member of the Royal Hibernian Academy, Ireland, 2006 Culture Ireland Exhibition Bursary, 2005 Cultural Relations Committee of Ireland Award, 2003 Arts Council of Ireland, Visual Arts Bursary, 2003 Project Studio, Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, 2001/2002 Arts Council of Ireland/Aer Lingus Art Flight Award 2000 and 2001 Arts Council of Ireland, Visual Arts Bursary, 2000 Residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig, 1999 EV+A Prize 1999 Arts Council of Ireland, Visual Arts Bursary, 1997/1998 Arts Council of Ireland, Materials Award, 1996 Artists Work Programme (Residency), Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 1996 NCEA National Student of the Year Award, N.C.A.D, 1995 Temple Bar Galleries and Häagen Dazs Solo Award, Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, 1995 Collections National Self-Portrait Collection, University of Limerick, Ireland Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland Office of Public Works, Ireland University College Limerick, Ireland The Caldic Collection, Rotterdam, Denmark Museum of Modern Art, Vienna, Austria European Central Bank, Frankfurt, Germany Goldman Sachs, London, UK Private Collections, Europe and North America Selected Publications 7:42, Irish Contemporary Art, published by Lapua Art Museum, 2011 Text by Katherine Waugh, editors Kirsi-Maria Tuomisto and Esa Honkimaki Creative Ireland - The Visual Arts, Contemporary Irish Arts, Editors, Noel Kelly and Seán Kissane, published by Visual Artists Ireland Temperance essays by David Galloway and John Cunningham, published by Letterkenny Cultural Centre, Letterkenny, Co Donegal Altered Images essay by Cliodhna Shaffrey, The Organisation of Hope, published by The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin 2009 The IMMA Collection, editor Marguerite O Molloy, published by The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 2005 Artist Notes, Some thoughts on The Seven Sacraments by Abigail O Brien, January 2005 Abigail O Brien, The Seven Sacraments and The Ritualised Daily Life essays by Stephanie Rosenthal, Ciaran Benson and Pater Friedhelm Mennekes, published by Haus der kunst and Steidl, 2004 Currents published by The Office Of Public Works, 2004 Career Development, Abigail O Brien The Visual Arts Sheet, page16, issue 5, 2004 Stories text by Stephanie Rosenthal and essays by Söke Dinkla, Christoph Hochhäusler, Thomas Jäger and Matias Martinez, pub. by Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2002 Unshärferelation, Fotografie als Dimension der Malerie published by Hatje Cantz, text by Peter FitzGerald, Das Weltliche ins Sakrale, (p.21), 2000 Installation Programme 1999, published by Dunlaoire Rathdown, essay by Abigail O Brien and Mary Kelly The Challenge of Power essay by Siun Hanrahan, published by Adapt, Limerick 1999 Lautlose Gegenwart, Das Stilleben in der Zeitgenossischen Fotografie Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, catalogue essay by Dr Jessica Mueller 1999 Irish Art Now - From the Poetic to the Political essays by Declan McGonagle, Fintan O Toole and Kim Levin, published by Independent Curators International, New York, in association with the Irish Museum of Modern Art, 1999 MA Fine Art Degree Show 1998 National College of Art and Design, published by Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane, text by Peter FitzGerald, Kitchen Pieces -Confession and Communion, (p.19), 1998 Figuration, Works from the Collection of The Irish Museum of Modern Art text by Catherine Marshall, Curator of the Collection, 1997 Representing Women: An Interview with Kiki Smith by Abigail O Brien, in Thought Lines, ed. by Sue McNab, published by National College of Art and Design, 1996 Baptism, Häagen Dazs/Temple Bar Gallery Solo Award catalogue, essay by Medb Ruane, 1996 EV+A 96, EV+A 98 and EV+A 99, catalogues Positions Held 2013 Secretary of the Royal Hibernian Academy, RHA Board member IVARO 78 79

41 Exhibition Details Highlanes Gallery Friday 13 September - Saturday 16 November, 2013 Laurence Street Drogheda Co. Louth W: T: +353(0) F: +353(0) Curator/Director: Aoife Ruane Opening hours: Monday-Saturday 10.30am-5.00pm Closed: Sundays Open: October Bank Holiday Weekend, open Sunday 27 October, Monday pm Irish Tour The Dock Friday 7 February Saturday 5 April 2014 St. George s Street Carrick on Shannon Co. Leitrim W: T: +353(0) Curator/Director: Siobhan O Malley Opening hours: Tuesday-Saturday 10.00am-6.00pm, Closed Mondays Limerick City Gallery of Art January 2015 Carnegie Building Pery Square Limerick W: T: +353(0) F: +353(0) Curator/Director: Helen Carey Opening hours: Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday-Friday 10.00am-5.30pm Thursday 10.00am-8.30pm, Saturday 10.00am-5pm, Sunday pm, Closed Bank & Public Holidays 80