GREEN ON RED GALLERY

Aoife Shanahan Biogram #1 2020 Archival inkjet print 72 x 59 x 3.5cm

Green On Red Gallery is delighted to announce the inaugural solo exhibition at the gallery of Aoife Shanahan's new photographic work. Shanahan first exhibited in the gallery's group show A Fine Line in 2015 and has exhibited in numerous curated shows and international art fairs with the gallery since. We’re are now delighted to present her new series BioTrace.

Shanahan’s interest in science and chemistry deeply informs her work. Recently, she was the subject of a solo exhibition, OXYgen, in the Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast 2022. OXYgen is the title of a series of pristine, black and white, unique photograms. They are made in the artist's laboratory darkroom using the narcotic Oxycontin directly on the light-sensitive paper to create what appear to be sublime seascapes and skyscapes.

BioTrace

“In 2020, Covid-19 spread across the world with devastating effects. The resulting pandemic has not only led to an unprecedented global health and economic crisis, it has significantly changed the way we live. It is almost incomprehensible that a virus, invisible to the naked eye, can leave its trace in such a significant way.  During lockdown, I started to think about how micro-organisms are all around us and how their activity mostly goes unnoticed. This work is a series of biograms that attempt to visually represent this on-going activity, documenting their presence and making a permanent record of their impact when displaced from their natural environment.  As we emerge from this pandemic, we must consider our role in the destruction of biodiversity that creates the conditions for diseases such as Covid-19 to arise. Rapid urbanisation, population growth and increased demand for natural resources disrupt ecosystems bringing people in closer contact with animal species more than ever before increasing the chance of disease and further pandemics

A piece of film is exposed to a source of bacteria and stored in a dark place for several weeks. The bacteria feed on the film’s silver gelatin emulsion, destabilizing it. As the culture grows, it consumes the gelatin as a food source and liberates the silver particles into abstract patterns. Eventually the bacteria die and no more changes occur. The resulting negative, visibly altered, is scanned and is a permanent record of their presence.

Making a negative is working with an old idea, capturing the world and creating an image from the past. This work is more concerned with revealing the unexplored possibilities that lie within the materiality of photography. Images can take days, weeks and even months to make. As the bacteria subtracts layers from the surface, it is not only recording the presence of life but it is stretching the sense of how time is recorded. This is particularly important in a rapidly changing, digital world.”

-Aoife Shanahan on BioTrace

Aoife Shanahan is a visual artist based in Dublin, Ireland.  She holds a degree in Pharmacy from Trinity College, Dublin. She worked as a community pharmacist before turning her attention towards photography. She graduated from the New England School of Photography and went on to complete her MFA in Photography at the Belfast School of Art. She is driven by a deep interest in analog processes and hands-on darkroom work. Her practice employs camera-less photography and explores how abstraction and reality can combine to become an extremely powerful tool, with the ability to communicate context and politics.

 
 Her work resides in a number of collections, including The National Gallery of Ireland, The OPW State Art Collection and The David Kronn/IMMA Collection. Her work has been exhibited internationally. Exhibition venues include Panopticon Gallery, The Centre for Fine Art Photography, The Griffin Museum of Photography, Green on Red Gallery and The Royal Hibernian Academy. She was the recipient of the 2016 RHA Curtin O'Donoghue Emerging Photographic Artist Award.