Domestic Bodies
Domestic Bodies (gallery installation view)
An exhibition by Áine Phillips and collaborators
Ella Bertilsson and Helena Walsh
126 Artist-Run Gallery Galway August 2024
Funded by Fingal Artists Award, Galway Bursary, ACI Agility Award
Curated by Emily Lohan
Domestic Bodies is a series of performative installations by Áine Phillips and collaborators exploring themes of home, shelter and sustenance in the context of domestic space. These works aim to push the limits and potentials of domestic things to create metaphors for female subjectivity and experience. The exhibition as a whole confronts the pleasures, discontents and struggles of habitation: finding, keeping, and the meaning of home.
The exhibition is divided into three parts:
Embedded (with Ella Bertilsson) is a collaborative performance installation made of 10 pigmented double duvets and sheets creating a topography under which the artists explore autonomy, security and safe resting place. Allusions to the mysteries and transformations of sleep and rest performed in public highlight the universal need for sanctuary, especially in relation to the mass homelessness of our times.
Red Couch / Archeology (with Emily Lohan) is a performance installation from Áine's Red Couch series. In the first two episodes the artist was subsumed into the underbelly of domesticity and was born again unscathed (Buttered Up 2016 and Escapology 2021). In this third scene she voluntarily dives back in again to uncover and excavate her-story.
Tender Morsels (with Helena Walsh) is a performance film exploring female subjectivity, experience and defiance in relation to food and domestic space, serving as a metaphor for the female persona.