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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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Abigail O’Brien: With Bread
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Shirin NeshatFRONT COVER
Lamdachrome Print 88 x 120 CM
Dorothea LangePG 16
Lamdachrome Print 88 x 120 CM
Grande DamePG 13
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Kathy PrendergastPG 17
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Eva HessePG 14
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Cindy ShermanPG 18
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Helen ChadwickPG 15
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Alice MaherPG 19
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Index of images
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Méret OppenheimPG 20
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Marina Abramovic PG 21
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Mary A. KellyPG 22
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Kathe KollwitzPG 23
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Tracey EminPG 24
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Frida KahloPG 25
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Judy ChicagoPG 26
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Louise BourgeoisPG 27
Lamdachrome Print 88 x 120 CM
Jenny SavillePG 28
Lamdachrome Print 88 x 120 CM
Sarah LucasPG 32
Lamdachrome Print 88 x 120 CM
Paula RegoPG 29
Lamdachrome Print 88 x 120 CM
Rebecca HornPG 33
Lamdachrome Print 88 x 120 CM
Christine BorlandPG 30
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18 PulaPG 34
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Marie-Jo LafontainePG 31
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22 LekPG 35
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3,000 ShekelsPG 36
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150 Balboa eachPG 37
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60 DinarPG 38
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240 Euro PG 39
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7 Kopeck & 90 SanteemPG 40
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300 KronePG 41
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Kara WalkerPG 42
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Siobhán HapaskaPG 43
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Nan GoldinPG 44
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Barbara KrugerPG 48
Lamdachrome Print 120 x 88 CM
Beverly SemmesPG 45
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Amand CooganPG 49
Lamdachrome Print 120 x 88 CM
Maya LinPG 46
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Tacita DeanPG 50
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Mona HatoumPG 47
Lamdachrome Print 120 x 88 CM
Rebecca HornPG 51
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Mary KellyPG 52
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Shadi GhadirianPG 53
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Grande Dame Moving Image
PG 54-55Video
Rachel WhitereadPG 56
Lamdachrome Print 88 x 120 CM
Georgia O’KeeffePG 57
Lamdachrome Print 88 x 120 CM
Dorothy CrossPG 58
Lamdachrome Print 88 x 120 CM
Kiki SmithPG 59
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Alanna O’Kelly PG 60
Lamdachrome Print 88 x 120 CM
Camille SouterPG 61
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Vivienne RochePG 62
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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