Bryony Dunne

Bryony Dunne

Born Year, Month, Day (Location)
Website bryonydunne.com

Bryony Dunne is an Irish visual artist and filmmaker living and working between Wicklow (Ireland) and Athens. Building on her background in documentary photography and visual anthropology, she explores the relations between humanity and nature, the arbitrariness of cultural representation, and the fantasies of human control. She has exhibited her work at venues such as BAHAR – Istanbul’s offsite project of Sharjah Biennial 13, The Mosaic Rooms (London), The Gypsum and Townhouse Gallery (Cairo), the Irish Film Institute (Dublin) and DEPO (Istanbul), and has participated with her films at a number of International film and video festivals such as Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival (Greece), Aesthetica (UK) and Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin. A recent film project, Above the Law, was supported by Screen Ireland and premiered at Cork International Film Festival. In 2020 she was a recipient of a Film Project Award from the Arts Council of Ireland to work on her first feature film entitled Pembe about the death of the last northern white male rhinoceros. In 2021 she was selected to participate at the Jan Van Eyck academy in the Netherlands.¹

Awards and honours

2020, Film Project Award, Arts Council Ireland
2019, Visual Artist Bursary Award, Irish Arts Council
2019, Culture Ireland Award for exhibition My Dear Friends at DEPO, Istanbul
2018, Arab Fund For Arts and Culture – Visual Arts Award for production of exhibition My Dear Friends
2018, National Geographic Storytelling Award
2018, Screen Ireland, Real Shorts Production Award for Above the Law
2018, Irish Nomination Euroconnection for Above the Law
2018, Nominee for FOAM Paul Huf Award
2017, Travel and Training Award, Irish Arts Council
2017, Best Director, Zawya Short Film Festival, Cairo, Egypt
2016, Best Documentary Short, Iranian Green Film Festival, Iran for The Orchard Keepers
2016, Mophradat Artist Award
2016, Travel and Training Award, Arts Council Ireland
2015, First Prize Award, Ethnofilm International Film Festival, Rovinj, Croatia for The Orchard Keepers
2014, Second Prize, “Energy of the Truth,” Saratov International Documentary Festival, Russia for The Orchard Keepers
2013, World View Media Fund Award

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

2019, My Dear Friends, DEPO, Istanbul, Turkey
2017, Amriya, Medrar Gallery for Contemporary Art, Cairo, Egypt
2016, They Usually Lie Around a Grotto, Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, Egypt

Group exhibitions

2021, (upcoming) Urgencies, Centre for Contemporary Art Derry-Londonderry
2020, Etat d’Urgence d’Instatnts Poetiques (EUIP), National Botanical Garden and LeCube, Rabat, Morocco
2020, Photo London Digital, online edition
2020, The Loss and the Rest, Art Athina, Zoumboulakis Gallery, Athens
2019, Art Barter, Athens
2019, Through Other Eyes, NeMe, Limmasol, Cyprus
2018, 6^th Athens Biennale –ANTI (Peng Collective), Athens, Greece.
2018, The Truth About Fiction, The Gypsum Gallery, Cairo, Egypt
2017, Athens Photography Photo book Exhibition Festival, Benaki Museum, Greece
2017, Bahar, Sharjah Art Biennial 13 Tamawuj, Istanbul, Turkey
2015, Trento Photography Festival, Italy
2012, Living with World heritage in Africa, Johannesburg, South Africa

Projects

The Sky Only Welcomes Those with Wings (2022)

This portrait series entitled ‘Messengers’ features migratory birds entangled in mist nets on the remote Greek island of Antikythera, a key stopover location that hosts thousands of flocks during their biannual flights between Europe and Africa. Upon capture, the ornithological method known as “bird ringing” is used to collect the biometric data of each winged subject before they’re ultimately set free with a metal identification tag. This process of data extraction appears to concentrate on scientific value alone while thrusting these subjects into the role of “messengers” of environmental changes and challenges. Contrariwise, these portraits emphasize aesthetic and poetic value as a way of conveying the complex, bittersweet reality that unfolds on Antikythera: beyond the frame — between capture and release — the scientists and volunteers spoke endlessly about their lifelong passion for the species. While the framing of these birds evokes museum-style taxidermy, their awkward and harrowing poses allude to and question the impositions of human made systems of classification and control over the natural world. She is currently in the process of determining an appropriate solution for exhibition display as she is keen to exhibit them as large glass slides – mimicking the documentation of a “scientific specimen” used to project archival slide images.