Irish artist to launch The Dock Winter Exhibitions

The Dock will welcome Irish artist Aideen Barry to launch its Winter Exhibitions and final public event of the year on Saturday, December 16, from 2-4pm. 

The event will mark the opening of two solo exhibitions by Swedish artist Ella Berlsson and Hungarian artist Eszter Szabó. 

Ella Bertilsson presents ''A Peanut Worm's Dream,'' a site-specific exhibition incorporating sculpture, video, and sound elements. 

A purpose-built immersive environment explores the relationship between the external world, imaginative inner worlds, and dreamscapes. This unique space blends the qualities of storage space and a catacomb, aiming to evoke a paradoxical sense of confinement and safety as if cocooned within a protective womb.

With a haunting feeling of entrapment juxtaposed against a prevailing undertone of mundanity, the installation envelops the audience within its structure. 

The installation consists of cramped rooms and a corridor, divided by an array of materials such as wood, cardboard, wire netting, bed sheets, wallpaper, and assorted found objects, including obsolete junk and forgotten pre-loved items. These claustrophobic spaces are complemented by looping video works presented on monitors and analogue TVs.

Within this realm, Bertilsson delves into themes of domesticity, dissociation, and escapism through a layered narrative framework, which has adapted a sense of magical realism to portray the complex experience of what it means to be human.

Ella Bertilsson (b. Umeå, Sweden) is a multi-award-winning visual artist based in Dublin. She currently has a studio residency at Rua Red (2019-2024) and is a recipient of the Next Generation Award from the Art Council of Ireland (2023). 

She has 1st class honours in Fine Art Print BA and MFA, both awarded from the National College of Art and Design IRE (2009, 2015) and Comparative Literature Studies and Creative Writing from Södertörn University SWE (2011-2012).

The artist acknowledges the kind support of the Museum of Everyone and IMMA's residency programme through the production of this work. ''A Peanut Worm'sDream'' opens on Saturday, December 16, at 2pm. 

''Pretty Pickle'' by Eszter Szabó also opens on Saturday, December 16, at 2pm. 

Image: ''Pretty Pickle'' by Eszter Szabó exhibition

Eszter works are mostly non-narrative, conceptual videos that are animated versions of her paintings. 

She creates drawings, oil paintings, and aquarelles, and she works equally with 2D and 3D animation. She researches manifestations of social processes. She often confronts the aesthetics of the status quo with the ordinariness of everyday life.

She has established a certain perceptual practice in which, instead of perceiving the extraordinary, she directs her focus on the ordinary. By recognising notions of familiarity, some invisible perspectives are revealed. She is interested in the traces of social and political processes that manifest in small attributes. All her works combine generalisation and non-judgmental observation, as well as mixing blurred half-truths with razor-sharp details.

Her aquarelles and oils are made with quick gestures over light surfaces with thin layers. Her videos deal with details that happen in seconds. She considers her videos to be extended versions of her paintings, and she instals them accordingly. She uses traditional techniques as well as digital media. In her recent works, she mixes 3D animation with digital simulations and experiments with the randomness and glitches generated.

Eszter lives and works in Budapest. She holds an MA from the University of Fine Arts in Hungary and completed her postgraduate studies at Le Fresnoy École Internationale des Arts Contemporains in France. 

She has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions in Hungary, Paris, New York, and Brussels, among others. She is currently exhibiting with Aideen Barry in Boiling Frog at Csikász Gallery, Veszprém in Hungary.

In 2021, Eszter Szabó won the prestigious Leopold Bloom Art Award. It was established by Irish art collectors Mary McLoughlin and John Ward.

Admission is free, and all are welcome.