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Highlanes Municipal Art Gallery

Abigail O’Brien: With Bread

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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

Abigail O’BrienWith Bread

13 September – 16 November 2013Published 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.

ISBN: 978-0-9572946-1-5©2013 Highlanes Gallery, the authors and the artistBritish 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.

Exhibition Partners:The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim Dates: 7 February – 5 April, 2014Limerick City Gallery of Art, LimerickDates: January 2015

Design: Fiona O’Reilly, On the Dot Design www.onthedotmultimedia.comPrint: Nicholson & Bass www.nicholsonbass.com

Highlanes Municipal Art GalleryLaurence StreetDrogheda Co. Louth IrelandT. + 00 353 (0) 41 – 9803311 F. + 00 353 (0) 41 – 9803313W. www.highlanes.ie E. [email protected]

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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

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 2009.

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.

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

(1995-2003).

Abigail O’Brien was born in Dublin in 1957. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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”.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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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.

‘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).

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 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.

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.

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).

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.

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 (1995-2004) 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.

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 impeccably-

wrought, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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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 2013.

Theo Dorgan is a poet, novelist and prose writer. He is a member of Aosdána.

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.

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

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.

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.

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Shirin NeshatFRONT COVER

Lamdachrome Print 88 x 120 CM

Dorothea LangePG 16


Grande DamePG 13


Kathy PrendergastPG 17


Eva HessePG 14


Cindy ShermanPG 18


Helen ChadwickPG 15


Alice MaherPG 19


Index of images

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Méret OppenheimPG 20


Marina Abramovic PG 21


Mary A. KellyPG 22


Kathe KollwitzPG 23


Tracey EminPG 24


Frida KahloPG 25


Judy ChicagoPG 26


Louise BourgeoisPG 27


Jenny SavillePG 28


Sarah LucasPG 32


Paula RegoPG 29


Rebecca HornPG 33


Christine BorlandPG 30


18 PulaPG 34


Marie-Jo LafontainePG 31


22 LekPG 35


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3,000 ShekelsPG 36


150 Balboa eachPG 37


60 DinarPG 38


240 Euro PG 39


7 Kopeck & 90 SanteemPG 40


300 KronePG 41


Kara WalkerPG 42


Siobhán HapaskaPG 43


Nan GoldinPG 44


Barbara KrugerPG 48


Beverly SemmesPG 45


Amand CooganPG 49


Maya LinPG 46


Tacita DeanPG 50


Mona HatoumPG 47


Rebecca HornPG 51


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Mary KellyPG 52


Shadi GhadirianPG 53


Grande Dame Moving Image

PG 54-55Video

Rachel WhitereadPG 56


Georgia O’KeeffePG 57


Dorothy CrossPG 58


Kiki SmithPG 59


Alanna O’Kelly PG 60


Camille SouterPG 61


Vivienne RochePG 62


Janet MullarneyPG 63


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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.

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.

Patrons

The Family of Bea Orpen and CEF (Terry) Trench, Founders of the Drogheda Municipal

Art Collection

Brendan and Bernadine McDonald

Benefactors

Anglo Printers

Dónall Curtin

Drogheda Grammar School

Drogheda & District Chamber of Commerce

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

Sacred Heart Secondary School, Drogheda

Smyth & Son Solicitors

Paul Smyth

Margaret Startup

Patrick Walsh

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

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

McGuinness, Brona O’Reilly

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

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 part-

financed 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.

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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

76 77

Abigail O’Brienwww.abigailobrien.com

Solo Exhibitions2015 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 (2001 – 2003) Centre Culture Irlandais, Paris, France

The Seven Sacraments (1995 – 2004) RHA, Royal Hibernian Academy, Gallagher Gallery, Dublin

Vita Activa Rubicon Gallery, Dublin

2004

The Seven Sacraments (1995 – 2004) Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany

The Seven Sacraments (1995 – 2004) 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 Exhibitions2013

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

2012

7:42 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 2012

7:42, Irish Contemporary Art Lapua Museum of Art, Lapua Finland. Group exhibition with Mary Kelly, Seán Cotter and Thomas Brezing

14.12.2011 - 26.2.2012 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 2009 - 2010

2009

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 2007 - January 1008

2007

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, 1995 - 2005, 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

78 79

2002

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, 1999 - 2001 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

1998

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

AwardsArts Council of Ireland, Touring Grant (With Bread, Highlanes Gallery on tour) 2013 -2015

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

Random Access Video Training Symposium, Sculptors’ Society Ireland, 1998

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

CollectionsNational 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 Publications7:42, 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, 2000 - 2011. 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

Some Trees published by Paul Andriesse for the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin 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

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Exhibition Details

Highlanes Gallery Friday 13 September - Saturday 16 November, 2013 Laurence Street Drogheda Co. Louth W: www.highlanes.ie T: +353(0)41-9803311 F: +353(0)41-9803313

Curator/Director: Aoife Ruane

Opening hours: Monday-Saturday 10.30am-5.00pm Closed: Sundays Open: October Bank Holiday Weekend, open Sunday 27 October, Monday 28 12.00-5.00pm

Irish Tour 2014-2015

The Dock Friday 7 February – Saturday 5 April 2014St. George’s StreetCarrick on ShannonCo. LeitrimW: www.thedock.ie T: +353(0)71-9650828

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: www.gallery.limerick.ie T: +353(0)61-310633 F: +353(0)61 310228

Curator/Director: Helen Carey

Opening hours: Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday-Friday 10.00am-5.30pm Thursday 10.00am-8.30pm, Saturday 10.00am-5pm, Sunday 12.00-5.00pm, Closed Bank & Public Holidays

Documents

download Gallery Catalogue, (PDF, 7.8MB)