The RHA is delighted to welcome Cecilia Bullo and Sinead Gleeson for an In-conversation event on April Wednesday April 19th in the Gallagher Gallery at 5.30pm, where Bullo’s exhibition, Being Haunted by the Breezes, Now How Will You Exist? is currently on display. The pair will discuss this exhibition and speak about their individual practices and how they overlap.
This event is free and booking is not required.
In Being Haunted by the Breezes, Now How Will You Exist?, the work emerges from the artist’s urge to reconnect directly with material processes and the bodily act of making. Specifically, Bullo seeks to celebrate the return of the feminine and her/their personification and incarnation as a creatrix, fighter and destroyer.
Being Haunted by the Breezes, Now How Will You Exist?, explores fictional, personal, archaeological and mythological narratives concerning Matrilinear ascendency. This includes Marija Gimbutas’ Kurgan hypothesis, which argues that European prehistoric culture was female-centred, and that the world was at peace when god was a woman.
In the artist’s own words, “Envisaged as archaeological dystopian assemblages, these works to me are apotropaic sculpture-amultes and esoteric spaces, from which one can resist the repressive discriminatory framework of patriarchal culture.”
Biographies:
Cecilia Bullo’s practice is research-based and informed by historical, mythological, psychoanalytic and feminist theories, which create a vital conceptual framework for her physical work. She has studied sculpture at IADT; Brera Fine Art Academy, Milan; the Academy of Fine Art, Athens and in 2009 she received her MFA from the National College of Art & Design (NCAD), Dublin.
Her work has been exhibited widely in Ireland and internationally in exhibitions such as, I know why the caged bird sings, curated by Stef Van Bellingen, WARP, Sint-Niklaas, BE, (2022); Material Stories, curated by Helen Carey, Galerie Michaela Stock, Vienna, AUT, (2022); Biomedia: Illness, Art and Medicine, curated by Felipe Osornio and CLOT Magazine, Museum of Contemporary Art, Querétaro, MX (2020).
She is currently an artist in residence at Fire Station Artists’ Studios having received the FSAS Residential Studio Award (2020/2023). She is a recipient of numerous awards from organisations such as, The Arts Council of Ireland, DLR COCO/Creative Ireland, DCC and Culture Ireland.
Sinéad Gleeson’s essay collection Constellations: Reflections from Life won Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards and the Dalkey Literary Award for Emerging Writer. Sinéad has engaged in multi-disciplinary collaborations with artists and musicians, including commissions from City Gallery Wellington, The Wellcome Collection, BBC and Frieze. In 2021, she collaborated with composer Stephen Shannon and artists Aideen Barry on By Slight Ligaments (Limerick City Gallery) and Alice Maher and Rachel Fallon on The Map / We Are The Map (Rua Red). She is co-editor with Kim Gordon of This Woman’s Work: Essays on Music and is working on a novel.
Image: Cecilia Bullo, being haunted by the breezes, now how do you exist?, 2023. Photography, Ros Kavanagh
Cecilia Bullo, Photography Ros Kavanagh
Sinéad Gleeson, Photography Bríd O’Donovan