Ailbhe Greaney
Street Flower

This photographic installation by Ailbhe Greaney was specially commissioned by the CCI and positions her work ‘Street Flower’ within the site in which it was made. Created in the CCI courtyard during the artist’s residency in 2014, this work evokes the movement of women (and their floral jackets) from Vietnam to Paris between 1914 and 1954. It forms the first chapter of Greaney’s work-in-progress ‘The Arrangement’ which seeks to explore the experience of transformation that takes place within a new homeplace. ‘Street Flower’ is shown alongside the artist’s more recent work ‘Wild Flowers’, created along the North Coast of Ireland in 2022 in collaboration with Chinese migrants.

“Across the range of Ailbhe Greaney’s studiously empathetic photographs, we see figures posed in situations of contemplation or low-key activity. We encounter characters, alone or in small groups, whose moments of represented interiority are complemented by the scale, complexity or insistent separateness of an exterior reality. Greaney’s images are sometimes artful constructions, sometimes patiently realised documentary reflections; in each mode, the works are the product of attentive, tender engagement. Some involve close family relationships, drawing on the known intimacies and everyday dependencies of domestic life. Others emerge from diverse international connections — developing from an artistic and ethical imperative to open her own world to the experience and perspective of others. Central to her way of thinking and seeing is the importance of the view from home — and of the view towards home. Greaney’s art centres our attention on the possibilities and anxieties of both” (Declan Long, 2022).

Ailbhe Greaney’s work has been published and exhibited both nationally and internationally including shows and publications at Aperture Foundation New York, Tate Modern and Tate Liverpool. Born in Galway, a former Fulbright Scholar, DCU and SVA graduate, Greaney is now based in Belfast as one of the founding members and Course Directors of the BA (Hons) Photography & Video Degree (2007) and MFA Photography Degree (Campus 2010/ E-Learning 2015) at Ulster University’s Belfast School of Art. She is the co-curator with CCI director Nora Hickey M’Sichili of a selection of work by four graduates of the Belfast School of Art exhibited as part of the CCI’s exhibition L’Irlande de Martin Parr