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A Solo Exhibition by Áine Phillips, with performance collaborations by Helena Walsh, Rachel Fallon and Ella Bertilsson
Curated by Matthew Nevin
March & July-July 2020
The MART Gallery, Dublin
Buttered Up is a solo exhibition from Áine Phillips at MART Gallery, Dublin. This exhibition explores wider themes behind the artist’s award-winning short film of the same name. This film has been shown in festivals, galleries and screenings all over Ireland, Europe and America.
Buttered Up tells the story of a performance artist who embarks on an improbable journey to explore a visceral underworld of domesticity. She uses a practical method of escapology, quantities of butter and a complete suspension of disbelief to undergo an unusual metamorphosis. The protagonist evades entrapment … or is the domestic frame itself a means of escape?
Themes of displacement and transformation are explored with humour in the short film, which will be screened in MART’s Gallery 2.
Meanwhile in Gallery 1, Phillips will expand on these themes with simultaneous live performances on the opening night by Áine Phillips, Rachel Fallon, Helena Walsh and Ella Bertilsson.
For the duration of the show, residues from the performances will exist as sculptural installations alongside a suite of watercolours derived from live performances by the artist over the last ten years. These images explore the female body and its relationship to the domestic frame, with allusions to violence, containment and emancipation.
About the Artist
Áine Phillips is one of Ireland’s leading performance artists. She has presented multi-media performance works internationally since the late ‘80s and creates work for diverse contexts; public art commissions and communities, the street, club events, theatres and gallery/museum exhibitions. Her work has been shown across five continents, in places such as Tokyo, Ljubljana, New York, Uganda, Brisbane, giving talks on her work at Tate Britain and IMMA. She curates performance art events in Ireland and the UK. Áine Phillips is the Head of Sculpture at Burren College of Art and lectures at the O’Donoghue Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance NUI Galway. She is the editor of Performance Art in Ireland: A History, published by the Live Art Development Agency and Intellect Books UK in 2015. Áine’s film Buttered Up won third Jury Prize at the Hamburg KLAPPE AUF Film Festival 2019.
This exhibition is kindly supported by Arts Council Ireland, Dublin City Council and Fingal County Council.
