As part of OFFSCREEN Kerlin Gallery will present two large-scale Jacquard tapestries by Ailbhe Ní Bhriain: Interval III and Interval VIII, both woven with wool, cotton, silk and Lurex. Originating in collage, they are a composite of fragments, brought together to create a visual world that is at once precise and enigmatic. Both works are underpinned by loose categories of imagery: early photographic portraiture, underground caves and architectural ruins. The formal construct of the group portrait, with its projection of status and stability, is punctured at once by the deep time of geological formations and the crumbling structures of the contemporary. The resulting scenes of threshold and collapse are inhabited by an unlikely cast of creatures – animals which thread an imagined line between present-day threats of extinction and ancient narratives of the underworld. 

Ailbhe Ní Bhriain’s work has been shown widely internationally, at venues including Broad Museum, Michigan; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Hammer Museum, LA; Istanbul Modern, Turkey; Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid; Innsbruck International Biennial, Austria; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, France and the 16th Lyon Biennale. Current and forthcoming exhibitions include An Experiment with Time, Kunsthal Gent, Belgium (Solo, 31 May – 31 December 2024); the Lahore Biennale (from 5 October); Lismore Castle Arts, Ireland and The Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin (both solo exhibitions, 2025). Recent solo exhibitions include Kerlin Gallery (2023); CCA Glasgow (2022); VISUAL Carlow; Crawford Art Gallery, Cork (both 2019), Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin; and Sirius Art Centre, Cork (both 2018). Public collections include Dallas Museum of Art; MAC Lyon; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin; Ulster Museum, Belfast; Crawford Art Gallery, Cork; Trinity College Dublin; and The Arts Council of Ireland.