Bag Lady | Áine Phillips

ÁINE PHILLIPS

BAG LADY

11am – 1pm, Friday, 27 September

Rua Red to The Square Shopping Centre

Duration: 120 minutes

In San Francisco some years ago I witnessed many thousands of homeless people in the parks trundling their personal collections of monumental receptacles. I was in awe of their sculptural and transformative presence and their unconventional kinetic ways of living. It was also devastating to see the evidence that so many have no basic shelter in this wealthy world; this is also the case in Ireland now.

Bag Lady is an acknowledgement of displaced people everywhere, saluting the endurance, perseverance and courage in adversity it takes to live on the streets. This performance presents homelessness in a new light, as diviners proposing alternative ways of being in this world, liberated from capitalism and the behavioral codes of society.

About Áine Phillips

Áine Phillips has been creating performance art, installation and art films since the late 80’s. She has presented her work widely in Ireland and internationally for multiple contexts: public space, social events, galleries, theatres, museums, biennales, performance and film festivals. She has shown her work at TATE Britain, Les Halles Brussels, City of Women Ljubljana, Kyoto Art Centre, Tanzquartier Vienna, Moving Image Gallery New York, National Review of Live Art Glasgow, among many others. Selected Irish exhibitions include The Lab, Irish Film Centre, Project, Golden Thread Gallery Belfast, EV+A Limerick and Galway Arts Centre. In 2015 she published “Performance Art in Ireland: A History” (Live Art Development Agency, co-published with Intellect Books UK), the first survey to chart the development of live art and performance in Ireland since the 1970s. Her work is supported and collected by the Arts Council of Ireland and the National Museum of Ireland.

Image: Bag Ladies, Ennis 2017, Áine Phillips. Photo by Marie Connole.

Host or Publisher Rua Red