Listen. Liquid, the syllables; the echo, luminous is a Mix Media 3 Channel Video installation with Drawing, originally installed in the Glebe House Gallery in Donegal. This work has been readdressed within the context of Barry's 'By slight ligaments..'
During lockdown after lockdown Aideen turned to ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) videos to help her sleep, it became her digital pilgrimage, she would play nature sounds and digital audio-scapes to help stave off the waves of insomnia that plague my world. She also found solace in gardening and going out in nature walks with her kids and dogs each day. Her Turas, was both physical and digital. It was the commitment she made to herself each day to keep the black canine at bay. When considering what Turas is now she had to make a kind of unattainable image of respite. This mixed media work is a digital “copy” or manifestation of nature, it a bricolage of hand drawn representations of nature, then reassembled digital collages of moving images of nature, hand draw digital animations replete with an audio score made up of Barry's own sensory sounds that she found help to trigger that tingling experience that would eventually leave her body to a sense of calmness and eventual sleep.
The title of the work is taken from another piece of art, a line from the poem by the great Doireann ní Ghríofa from her work “At Bridget’s Well”. Poetry had a similar affect on Barry, it was a material she returned to a lot over the course of this plague year. It expanded her hypothalamus to picture materials and fluid in-between spaces and allowed my racing mind to rest. The poem by Ní Ghríofa is an ode to Bride, not Colmcille, but these two iconic Irish figures have wells, pilgrimage and liminal dreamy in-between spaces in common. In this wonderful work of literature the piece sees nature is a potent material, it transcends the reader to a kind of astral plane beyond a place of pain and suffering. As an artist you can only hope to achieve such distraction to the complexity and anxiety that this world seems to dish out at times.
Detail of Listen Liquid; the syllables projection
Detail of Listen Liquid; the syllables projection