Lyndon Barrois Jr., Elisa Giardina Papa, Léann Herlihy Reflex Blue

This exhibition brings together the individual practices of Lyndon Barrois Jr., Elisa Giardina Papa, and Léann Herlihy. All three artists use language and image-making to disrupt ways of understanding and communication that are supposedly universal. Each artist’s work explores the cultural impact of images and their relationship to storytelling and technology. Using formatting, modification, compositing and erasure, their work seizes instances of multiplicity and mystery.

Lyndon Barrois Jr. is interested in the sleight-of-hand that relates the cinematic world with that of an artwork conservator. Embracing the power and limitations of print media processes, he uses the suspension of belief as a moment where an alternate reality and history can become conceivable.

Elisa Giardina Papa’s film installation “U Scantu”: A Disorderly Tale, invokes historically overlooked multi-species mythologies and practices of healing. The film and accompanying ceramic sculptures depict iconography from Sicilian fables and oral tradition from what the artist describes as a “socio-poetic and socio-magical” archive.

Léann Herlihy’s With Everything We’ve Got! takes stylistic reference from alt text/image description, and utilises frameworks of coalition building. This body of work moves against common understandings of sporting bodies and situates itself as a warm-up for an expansive project that realises an active state of losing/falling as an embodied response to systemic injustice.

Reflex Blue is accompanied by a programme that expands the ideas and methodologies of the exhibition through artist talks, film screenings, publication and performance. Invited artists are Michael Hanna, Joseph Noonan-Ganley, Alice Rekab x Stephen Rekab.

Recent exhibitions by the exhibiting artists include: Lyndon Barrois Jr.: Rosette, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2023); How to Make a Mirror, Melanie Flood Projects, Oregon (2022); Mirage Collar, Artists Space, New York (2022), Dreamsickel, 47 Canal, New York (2021). Elisa Giardina Papa: Gropius Bau, Berlin (2023); Brush Stroke, GAMeC, Bergamo (2023); Techno Sapiens, M+, Hong Kong (2022); The Milk of Dreams, La Biennale di Venezia (2022). Léann Herlihy: EVA International, Limerick (2023 - forthcoming); Beyond Survival School Bus, Dublin Fringe Fesitval (2022); the middle of nowhere, Project Arts Centre, Dublin (2022); STUNTMAN, ]performance s p a c e[, Folkestone UK (2020).

Thanks to The Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art for their generosity. This exhibition has been supported by an IMMA Production Residency

Image Description: A deep medium blue and white poster containing the title, dates, and artists’ names of the exhibition, as well as the names of the artists in the expanded programme. The supplemental visual graphics of a square chequerboard and a halftone gradient bar appear dispersed between the text. These graphics are based on printer’s marks such as trim lines and colour bars, which are used in digital documents to assist the offset printing press in proper alignment, trimming, and colour values.