‘An Experiment with Time’ is an exhibition by Irish artist Ailbhe Ní Bhriain. It comprises works across film, Jacquard tapestry, collage and print, brought together in dialogue with the unique setting of Kunsthal Gent and KHG04, the fourth spatial intervention in Kunsthal Gent by artist and architect Olivier Goethals.

‘An Experiment with Time’ draws us into a world of theatricality and disorientation in which the familiar is re-imagined in light of a destabilised future. A decommissioned medical site is submerged in water; a chameleon is the sole inhabitant of a museum of computing history; a brain-coral becomes the centerpiece of an iconic cathedral. Throughout the exhibition, diverse locations, histories and systems of knowledge are mysteriously compressed and conflated. A portrayal of environmental aftermath emerges, weaving a dreamlike narrative around the constructs through which humans have sought to understand and control the world.

The exhibition takes its title from a 1927 publication by the Irish-born popular scientist J.W. Dunne. This book outlined a belief system based on precognitive dreams—a theory of parallel timelines whereby dream narratives predict future events. Using CGI, collage, tapestry and print, Ní Bhriain references Dunne’s text to explore our current relationship to both past and future, so profoundly unsettled and called into question by the threat of climate disaster. 

This exhibition has been supported by Culture Ireland