Recalling Familiar Entities

16/03/2018 – 01/04/2018
126 Artist-Run Gallery, Galway

Basic Space in association with 126 Gallery is delighted to present Recalling Familiar Entities with work by Ali Kirby and Conor O’Sullivan.

Recalling Familiar Entities will be made up of sculptural materials, forms and imagery, responding to the architectural, the prosaic, and the everyday.

The exhibition will bring together a group of work that will address the performativity of object, formally reducing them to the point where their pragmatic nature is dismissed. The materiality of these works will exist in flux. Materials and forms that were once useful will be reworked into objects that examine how the identity of an object can become blurred and physical language altered.

Exemplifying minimalism’s concern with site, Recalling Familiar Entities looks to the uncanny eeriness of global architecture and the ubiquity of neoliberal fantasy cities. The pedestrian spectacle of LED displays and consumer packaging as unactivated monuments demonstrating the difficult relationship between calculation, function, and identity.

Please join us for an opening celebration, at 126 Gallery, 6pm, Friday, 16 March and for a conversation between curator Daniel Bermingham and artist Ali Kirby, 2pm, Saturday, 24 March. Recalling Familiar Entities runs until Sunday, 1st April.

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Ali Kirby - Ali Kirby creates sculptural assemblages and installations that physically respond to the built environment. Her approach to materials and colour is intuitive, often employing a muted palette, soft textures and hard edges to create the various surfaces and forms normally associated with architecture. These soft-edged fabrics and forms butt up against concrete or wood in an attempt to draw our attention to the relationships between materials, how they connect, support, become damaged or distressed and ultimately reveal their potential for transformation.

Ali Kirby, born in Dublin, Ireland, graduated in 2014 with first class honours (BA) in Fine Art from LSAD, specialising in Sculpture & Combined Media. Kirby is the recipient of the Arts Council Next Generation Bursary Award for Visual Art 2017, the Fire Station Sculpture Workshop Residency Award & Bursary 2016, and the RHA Studio Residency Award 2015. Recent exhibitions include Thinking Living Dwelling (2017) the Dock, Leitrim, Futures, Series 3, Episode 1 (2017) Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, only connect (2017) Kevin Kavanagh gallery, Dublin, all shimmers here (2016) MART Gallery, Dublin, Describing Architecture - Memory and Place (2015) City Assembly House, Dublin, the 185th RHA Annual Exhibition (2015) Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, Periodical Review #4 (2014) Pallas Projects, Dublin, Essays for the House of Memory (2014) Ormston House, Limerick, Single Channel (2013) Chartier Arts Venue, Connecticut, USA, Undertow (2012) the LAB, Dublin.

Conor O’Sullivan - Working across sculpture, video and installation, Conor O’Sullivan’s work investigates the intersections between art, technology and design. Incorporating found objects that recall familiar entities from the built environment and adjusting their contents and use. O’Sullivan creates hybrid forms that are in the process of becoming, growing, transporting or communicating - generating a sense of anticipation of things happening in the space. These hybrid objects collapse distinctions between usability, aesthetic and form. O’Sullivan’s work appropriates these seemingly mundane objects into assemblages that seem to exist in their own autonomous world, unlinked to any fixed location or time.

Conor O’Sullivan, born in Dublin, Ireland graduated in 2016 with first class honour (BA) in Fine Art Print from NCAD. Recent exhibitions include nod to shake (2017) The Darkroom, Stoneybatter, Fiber to the X (2017) Royal Hibernian Academy, Today's Firefighter (2016) Dublin Fire Brigade, O'Brien Institute, Marino, NCAD Graduate Showcase (2016) NCAD, Thomas St., SPACE(s)?, a collaborative installation of multi~disciplinary works (2016) Curated by: Jenn Moore and Jamie Smyth, NCAD, Thomas St, STAR (2015), University College Dublin, Stillorgan Rd, Belfield. Preen Group Exhibition (2015), Steambox Gallery, School St. Dublin, (W.I.P.), Group Exhibition (2015) Old A4 Art Building, Thomas St., Pinhole Cabinet (2014), Black Church Print Studio, 4 Temple Bar, The Printed Palimpsest (2014) Showcase and Panel Discussion, NCAD Gallery, Blackchurch Print Studio and NCAD Gallery alongside the Pull Bite Rally Exhibition.

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Basic Space would like to thank 126 Gallery for kindly supporting Recalling Familiar Entities and we look forward to future endeavours together.

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Recalling Familiar Entities is part of a multi-site programme of exhibitions, residencies and public programmes looking at institutional attitudes, community spaces and education.