Achill is Irelandʼs windy westernmost island; a naturally secluded place. Its sloping peaks rise above undulating fields of scrub trees and thick underbrush, brown bogs and mottled knolls, finally giving way to rock-strewn valleys, sheltered coves and the sea. The sky, receding into distant atmosphere or encroaching heavily over the land, deliberates and might at any moment spoil the calm.
Linda Brownlee has been spending her August holidays in Achill amongst family and friends for the last 16 years. Captivated by the texture of its raw and unpredictable landscape, the series presented in Brownlee’s series of work titled Achill is the result of the photographic explorations she undertook with a group of local teenagers throughout the last two years.
Photographed in their favourite spots near their homes, or sites chosen by Brownlee, these adolescent figures – resting or only hesitating within the cameraʼs frame – draw the eye into and across the islandʼs contours, revealing the shape of the land through the intimacy of their relationship to it. A tranquillity pervades Brownleeʼs photographs that, despite rain or wind, stems from a sense of belonging. Her careful images capture the moody portrait of a place.
Info
Opening: 7pm 1 July
Dates: 1-28 July
Opening hours:
Wed to Fri 12pm-6pm
Sat 12pm-4pm
KTcontemporary
25-27 Donnybrook Rd
Dublin 4
Location Map
“Fictionary is a compendium of portraits reifying characters from literary history; characters that intrigued, frightened, and excited me and who I wanted to create a visual identity for, as well as characters that already hold a firm footing in popular culture that I wanted to subvert and reinvent. Influences for this project have included the satire of Mikhail Bulgakov, Angela Cater’s marriage of fantasy and realism, classic fairy tales, and characters deeply entrenched in society’s imagination. My work is largely focused on identity, environment and performance and the correlation between those three. Fictionary brings another dimension to this triad, that of the puppeteer forcing established identities into new shoes and perverting any preconceived notions the spectator may have had of these characters.”
About the Photographers
Holly McGlynn has a BA in History of Art and Architecture and French from Trinity College Dublin and an MA in Photography and Urban Cultures from Goldsmith’s, University of London. She was selected in 2010 to exhibit solo at Matsu Photographer’s Gallery in London as well as being short-listed for the prestigious Deptford X Photography Project. Her work has been published in the Guardian, Vice Magazine, TimeOut, Film Ireland, Bellyflop Magazine, and GCN.
