New Irish Works series 2023-24:
Bryony Dunne at The Library Project

Launch and book signing 6pm Thursday 2nd March
Performance 7pm BirdBecomeBird by Suzanne Walsh

PhotoIreland presents The Sky Only Welcomes Those with Wings, the latest body of work by Irish artist Bryony Dunne. First presented to international audiences during PhotoIreland Festival 2022, the launch will be marked by a performance by Suzanne Walsh, kindly loaned by the Arts Council of Ireland Collection and facilitated by the artist. This is the second exhibition on the New Irish Works series and it also represents the launch of Bryony Dunne’s latest publication.

Bryony Dunne is an Irish visual artist and filmmaker whose practice engages with the overlap between documentary film, cinema, photography, and the natural world. She develops research-driven projects that attempt to challenge ingrained anthropocentric and speciesist attitudes by developing imaginative and informative narratives that examines humanity’s problematic yet essential relationship to the natural world, oftentimes using fact-based fictions and hypothetical futures to build these interconnected narratives.

Performance:
BirdBecomeBird by Suzanne Walsh

7pm Thu 2 March
at The Library Project

Marking the launch of Bryony Dunne's exhibition and photobook The Sky Only Welcomes Those with Wings, artist and writer Suzanne Walsh will perform BirdBecomeBird, a vocal work that draws upon an exploration between the human and the nonhuman. The performance has been kindly loaned by the Arts Council of Ireland Collection and facilitated by Suzanne Walsh.

Pre-Order your copy of Bryony Dunne's
The Sky Only Welcomes Those with Wings.

Emerging from a body of research into the entanglement of manmade systems and nonhuman life, The Sky Only Welcomes Those with Wings juxtaposes the vantage points of birds and people, exploring humanity’s preoccupation with control, hierarchies and omniscience. The book departs from two film projects filmed across Greece, Egypt and Ireland that take up themes of migration, border ecologies and ornithomancy. Alongside a selection of stills, script excerpts and research images, Dunne presents her own expository footnotes as well as commissioned texts by artist Suzanne Walsh, film critic Mouwafak Chourbagui and curator Daphne Vitali. 

Shifting perspectives and temporalities, it oscillates from the telescopic to the panoptic, from the divination practices of the ancient Greek imaginary to the clumsy artifice of the modern nation-state system, from the rooftop pigeon coops of Cairo to the military and ornithological infrastructure of the Mediterranean. Through the thermal infrared cameras of aid workers, miniature camcorders mounted to eagles, birdwatching binoculars, border surveillance apparatuses and satellite tracking imagery, this lithe volume provides insight into how birds see and are seen, in hopes that we might begin to see our own systems for what they are: neither natural nor inevitable, however normal they may appear.

Do you know what PhotoIreland does?

PhotoIreland grows the reputation of Irish artists globally through a 360 degree support system and platform for contemporary photography, activated through a diversity of projects. These include events such as PhotoIreland Festival and Halftone print fair amongst others; resources such as the PhotoIreland Collection, a specialised research library of photobooks, and Ireland’s Art Bookshop, The Library Project; via publishing with projects such as OVER Journal and TLP Editions; professional development support through networking and consultancy opportunities; and empowering early and mid-career photographers via our international partnerships, most relevantly through Creative Europe co-funded platforms such as FUTURES and Parallel.

Find out more about PhotoIreland at photoireland.org
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