Kilkenny exhibition explores new ways of relating to the natural world

All at Once Collapsing Together, a new body of work by Caoimhín Gaffney opened at the Butler Gallery on Saturday and runs until July 28.

Spanning across film, photography and writing All at Once Collapsing Together uses fiction to imagine new ways of relating to the natural world. Images throughout the exhibition act as mirrors to the healing and relief the environment can offer, with narratives fraught with climate anxiety interrupting and reframing these as temporary and fragile.

The film and texts are without traditional narratives or character arcs, aiming to create an unsettled terrain that reflects the uncomfortable emotions and sensations they discuss. The work asks us to consider how important natural sensory information is to our sense of self: what does it mean for a sound to go missing from our ecosystem? When we no longer hear our native birds, which parts of ourselves will be forgotten?

Caoimhín Gaffney is an artist, filmmaker and writer whose work has been shown in exhibitions and film festivals internationally. Notable solo exhibitions include the Crawford Art Gallery, Block 336 in London and the Contemporary Art Institute CAI02 in Sapporo. Gaffney's films have screened at prestigious festivals including European Media Arts Festival, Cork Film Festival, and London Short Film Festival where they received the Little White Lies award.
Their international recognition includes being an UNESCO-Aschberg laureate artist-in-residence at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art’s Changdong residency in South Korea and receiving a Sky Arts scholarship. Gaffney holds an MA Photography and Moving Image from the Royal College of Art and obtained their PhD from Ulster University's School of Arts Humanities & Social Sciences in 2022.

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