Artist
Patrick O'Byrne
Patrick O'Byrne is a visual artist and writer from Tallaght, Dublin currently based in Berlin, Germany. He recently acquired his BA in Photography at the Institute of Art and Design, Dun Laoghaire. His work focuses on the familial and the themes which inhabit it, finding himself drawn to the distinctions and collaborations between people and place. His relationship to photography finds itself inhabited within time and memory, using it as a device to explore the past in some attempt to reconcile with his own self-identity.
I'll Be Damned
I'll Be Damned is a project which at its core documents the artist’s father's childhood through the use of found imagery, letters and other artefacts alongside Patrick’s own photographic work. Baring witness to the grip that both alcoholism and the Catholic church had on the country at the time, the artist surveyed the area in which he called home in an attempt to traverse the trials and tribulations of a young boy during a time where existence is ever fleeting. The project deals with masculinity, existentialism and sexual identity. The work attempts to dissolve the transitional period between boyhood and manhood, exposing its fragility and eventual dissipation. It primarily focuses on a point in the father’s life filled with trauma. Firstly, the sexual abuse he was subjected to under the Catholic church at the age of 12 and secondly the trauma related to his father’s alcoholism and its place within the family home.
Aside from the photographic practice undertaken within the project, the work served as a method of deepening the artist’s relationship with his father as well as developing his understanding of self and its relation to the family history. The therapeutic qualities of photography enabled both Patrick and his father to embark on a journey which only proved to strengthen their bond between one another and their bond with ourselves.
The project has also found itself culminating in the form of a self-published edition of 1 photobook, which can be seen in video form at the following link: https://www.patrickobyrne.com/ill-be-damned-book
Emma O’Brien is an artist with whom we became well acquainted during her participation in PhotoIreland’s Professional Development Programme. We consider this
nomination an organic next step in her progression as a professional artist. Her work The Holding Place considers the politics of motherhood and domestic labour, exposing patriarchal systems still present within home environments.
Patrick O’Byrne is an emerging artist whose practice, though quiet on first sight, lingers and grows louder within, engrossing the viewer in its multi-layered narratives. In I’ll be damned, O’Byrne looks at the history of his father growing up against the backdrop of Catholicism and alcoholism in Ireland, interrogating subjects of masculinity and sexual identity.
Through the stories and histories of Irish women, artist Pauline Rowan collaborates with a small community of people as they continue to care for a convent and garden
site marked for demolition. Under a Vaulted Sky uses photography, the artist’s own performative response, and collage work to talk about land control and concepts of home and belonging.
Ronan McCall is better known for his commercial photographic work, but we feel his personal practice deserves further attention. McCall is a film photographer, processing and printing his own work. He creates indelible imagery of cinematic landscapes and extraordinary portraits, proffering alternative narratives of reality whilst commenting on pertinent issues.
Through playful approaches, Cian Burke investigates the role of imagination in scientific systems and methods of work. His project, I fear that the magic has left this
place, takes a Swedish government manual – titled ‘If Crisis or War Comes’ – as a departure point for meditations on home, the future, threat and protection.