Image provided courtesy of the artist and A4 Sounds.
Walk backwards out of the dream
Where a clutch of bare twigs shattered the face of the moon
(Your instinct insists it can’t happen)
Peer down through dayless dim
At the milk, huddled in its cup.
What else could pass
From her lips to ours?
Lydia McBride’s An Tionscadal Dromchla Exhibition 00 is concise and expansive. The exhibition is described as ‘five short stories and a gallery show’, with each story carving a path through the shadow of the last story. Enter a world broken into two colours. Black and white become the poles around which all potential oppositions dissolve, vibrate, and spin. Self/Other. Presence/Absence. Fact/Fiction.
In the gallery, voices and characters summon you diaidh ar ndiaidh (one after another). Feel the ground peel away from beneath your feet, grammar holds your hand. You are guided through fragments of events spread evenly in a stark space. Black text lays large across relentlessly white walls. Words sprawl and proclaim what the dream wants for you, what it thinks of you. Text beckons you closer. A neat, slanting hand confides in you.
Remember their names; Imogen, Brigid. You dissolve into one another as the story shifts, exchanging skin for stone. Then disappear. You rub brightness into your flesh and feel your eyes ache for shade. Anonymous watchtowers will be there when you leave. Placid and pixelated, left-overs from a video game, they demand you check your story for holes, ach eadrainn féin na h-eachtraí seo. But these events are between you and I.
The moon slips by your mind and the music shifts like smoke. Universal/particular, collective/individual – letters ring like bells, bringing out the shiny extra-dimensions of your being you may have shelved.
McBride’s art is an eloquent challenge to the separation of story and teller. The exhibition places you directly within the narrative and invites you to stray with the cleverly costumed others. The term folk-lure grew on my tongue as folk-lore was shed softly. I wanted to know more, and the stories rewarded my search. Irish is folded against Béarla with precision. Caverns and pockets of time blossom outwards as the words themselves are wrought into new forms. I could describe the stories as a blend of mystery, sci-fi, ritual, poetry – Cúchullain and Oisín made cameos as I read. An Tionscadal Dromchla is the cure for the chronic re-packaging of Irish culture into tourist adventures and the limits placed on our gendered bodies. Stories pass from lip to ear. The gallery arches and shudders above and beyond your shoulders, a queer and familiar space, a plot that offers you a new name.
A4 Sounds is a non-profit artist-run workspace and gallery in north-inner-city Dublin. It is one of the biggest artist-led spaces in Ireland, currently providing facilities and professional development supports to seventy artists. Memberships are currently available. Image provided courtesy of the artist and A4 Sounds.
