The Irish Arts Review

Autumn 2024 - ‘Artists on View’ series
Painter and printmaker Ailbhe Barrett’s engagement with making, or ‘sculpting’ the copperplate to her will, results in work of transcendental emotional intensity writes Angela Griffith

[Extract]
“Ailbhe Barrett is a landscape artist. A familiar subject in Irish art, the landscape was viewed historically in a variety of ways, including through an idealised colonial lens and as a potent Irish Revivalist metaphor. Since the emergence of Modernist movements, landscape art has veered from mimetic to self-reflexive projections, often questioning humankind's problematic relationship with nature. Barrett believes in the power of art and its ability to set, question or steer agendas. Describing herself as a small voice, she sees her role as a questioner, asking what our purpose is.

As is the case with many who leave the place where they were reared, Barrett's relocation to Dublin amplified her sense of identity as rural. Barrett returns to the place of her childhood, Granagh, Co Limerick, a primary source for her work, both physically and metaphysically. She recalls vividly the natural surroundings, spaces she stood in and observed, but is also concerned with the emotional and spiritual realities of such places. They are reservoirs of memory. Yet, as she recalls her native townland in her work, she is unafraid to allow her imagination to colour her representations.

Ailbhe Barrett's work is as complex as it is beautiful. It is delicate and intense, both physically and emotionally. It does not tell a story but offers the beginnings of one. It does not shout, but it persuades.”

Angela Griffith is Assistant Professor in the Department of History of Art and Architecture, Trinity College Dublin.

Full article:
The Irish Arts Review is Ireland’s flagship cultural publication. Available quarterly from www.irishartsreview.com

The Sunday Times

1st November 2020
Interview with Eithne Shortall | Photograph: Bryan Meade

[Extract]
Ailbhe Barrett’s images are usually landscapes, some linked to her homeplace of Granagh in Limerick. They’re misty, romantic, sad and quietly emotional. What does she want to depict? “I can’t quite articulate it verbally; a mood or a memory or connection. Generally, it’s not about the place itself but more my response to it.”
Turns out I’m the third person to describe her work as sad. “I better look into what that’s about,” she laughs. “It’s good it gets an emotion from the viewer. That’s important.”

“Ultimately you’re trying to figure out how best to get across what you want to say. All art — theatre, music, writing, sculpture, painting — is the same in that the artist is trying to get something across from within, or from an observation or from memories. Sometimes you’re trying to explain it to yourself as much as to the viewer or to the listener. A fluency develops over the years but you’re trying to get what’s inside you out. A lot of my work is quite simple in that it’s landscape, but it’s like I’m trying to figure out the internal landscape or our relationship to our surroundings, rather than the surroundings themselves.”

In the past two years, print has taken over. Graphic Studio, or any print studio, specialises in original print. “Because each print is hand-inked, there’s going to be slight variants,” says Barrett. “They’re all unique, to an extent. Not to be confused with a digital reproduction of a painting, a completely different thing.”

Working with copperplate prints involves covering a sheet of copper in wax, drawing the image in the wax with a needle, then placing the plate in acid. The acid will eat where the wax has been lifted. The whole plate is then covered in ink and wiped. “It looks like you’re wiping it off, but the ink will sit in the lines where you’ve left your marks. You press it on a sheet of paper, with huge pressure, and ink is squeezed out of those lines and onto the paper. Print-making goes back to antiquity,” she says. “People often say if Rembrandt walked in, he’d still recognise the material. The acid is the same, even the presses are the same."

Full article:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ailbhe-barrett-on-her-path-from-home-education-to-the-graphic-art-studio-dublin-zplszknbf

Videos

Graphic Studio Dublin - B&A Commission

Sept 2019
An introduction to Ailbhe Barrett’s work at Graphic Studio Dublin for Behaviour & Attitudes Commission 2019

Graphic Studio Dublin - Artists Beyond the Studio

July 2021
Painter and Printmaker Ailbhe Barrett talks about her evocative, highly-charged landscapes, many of which draw on memory of her home in Granagh, Co. Limerick.