Áine McBride

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Áine McBride is an artist that works with sculpture and photographic elements, often using construction and utility materials to create installations that resonate with the personal and public spaces of the built environment. McBride lives and works in Dublin. Recent exhibitions include work suite, Mother’s Tankstation, Dublin (2018); Habitat HQ, Douglas Hyde Gallery (offsite), Trinity College Dublin (2017); Hannah Fitz, Áine McBride, Daniel Rios Rodriguez, Marcel Vidal, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin (2017); and Effort, Dada Post, Berlin (2017). McBride is a residential artist at Fire Station Artist Studios, Dublin, and is represented by mother’s tankstation Dublin | London.¹

Born Donegal, 1987, lives and works in Dublin

Áine McBride utilises the ‘aesthetic’ prompts and signifiers of the familiar yet sterile habitats of office receptions, waiting rooms, airport terminals, and bank lobbies to construct their complex sculptural language. Employing a range of typically mundane construction materials (plywood, corkboard, concrete, tiling, steel), forms to which we have become desensitised to in the ‘real world’ are appropriated to reflect a new understanding of the values of everyday existence. McBride’s works indicatively hold a resemblance to furniture: chairs, tables, shelving or common architectural features, but without obvious functionality; their reductively processed forms create a minimalism that is acutely ambiguous. Their sculptures resolve this concept of prosaic ‘practicality’ by the refusal to sensationalise McBride’s subjects, metaphorically transcending their designated purpose and intended limitations, and taking reassurance in objects and materials existing for their own inherent value, rather than a perceived use. Incorporating elements of flat-pack and modular furniture that has become essential to our transitory lifestyles, McBride’s constructions and temporary or site-specific interventions, further reflect the constantly changing urban landscape of our cities, megalopolises and the way we navigate their infrastructures.

Áine McBride graduated from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, in 2016 and, since then, their work has been included in several projects: Habitat HQ, a site responsive installation solo project organised by the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, in which the artist created an immersive sculptural environment within the brutalist concourse of Trinity College’s Arts Building. Other recent exhibitions include: UNCANNY, a Two-person exhibition with Nicolas Bourthoumieux at 10N, Brussels, …and the days run away like wild horses over the hills…, Scoil Lorcáin, Dublin (2019), Periodical Review 2017, Pallas Projects, Dublin (2017), NEU-GEN 2017: Towards Both the Parts, NCAD Gallery, Dublin (2017). McBride’s first solo exhibition, work suite, took place at mother’s tankstation, Dublin in February 2018. Their second solo exhibition with the gallery, ~ set opened at mother’s tankstation, London in May 2019. McBride is the recipient of the Arts Council of Ireland’s Next Generation Award 2017, Visual Arts Bursary Award (2019, 2020), and has been selected for residencies at FLACC, Genk in Belgium (2019) and Fire Station Artists’ Studios in Dublin (2018 – 2020). McBride is also one of the artists selected for the Platform Commissions programme for the 39th EVA International – Ireland’s Biennial of Contemporary Art held in Limerick, Ireland. Augmenting the 19th century architecture of Limerick’s Sailor’s Home, McBride presented and/or land in September 2020 as part of Phase 1 of the Biennial. McBride will hold their third solo exhibition with mother’s tankstation | Dublin in Autumn 2021.^2
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