HUNG OUT TO DRY, 2025
Solo Show at the Ballina Arts Centre, Mayo, Ireland
HUNG OUT TO DRY, 2025
Solo Show at the Ballina Arts Centre, Mayo, Ireland
The traditional Maori greeting “Ko wai koe?” literally translates as “Who are your waters?”, which means “Who are you?” or “Where are your birthing waters from?”. In 2017, New Zealand became the first country in the world to grant legal rights to its rivers and waterways.
This new body of work explores the damaging effects of algal in Irish and Austrian waterways. Blue-green algae blooms, otherwise known as Eutrophication, are staining our waterways further damaging our already fragile ecosystems. Duffy walks along selected waterways extracting plant samples from its borders, placing a particular focus on the River Moy for this show. He then brings the plant cuttings back to his studio for preparation, manipulating them with staining chemical agents before placing them on glass slides under a microscope for examination. The resulting sealed glass slides inform his vibrant air bubbled paintings, his dripping sculptures and his otherworldly photographs as he magnifies microscopic details of life. The artworks protrude, pierce, contaminate and suffocate the surfaces of his installations. Some of these materials and working methods are inspired by old photos of the artist’s great grandfather working in his darkroom, who founded Duffy’s Photography in 1912.
“Duffy’s playful attitude to materials and situations counterbalances a very serious social conscience and political intent. The themes of his work include post colonialism, media, cultural appropriation, and social, individual and collective responsibilities.” Alice Maher
The title of the show, Hung Out to Dry insinuates foul play towards someone who has been left in a difficult and vulnerable position. The work exposes the exploitation of natural resources on the global south by corporations from the global north, with specific attention given to the occupied territories of Western Sahara, rock phosphates, plant roots, and landmines underfoot. The exhibition generates an apocalyptic lens of this dryland as a precursor to our own impending climate collapse and the destruction of Irish waterways. “Gota a gota” is a popular and hopeful saying in Western Sahara which roughly translates as “drop by drop, a river runs”.
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© Bryan Gerard Duffy