Aisling McCoy and Shane Lynam
Poetics of Space

Aisling McCoy and Shane Lynam (currently on a residency at the CCI) are Irish photographers based in Dublin. Their respective work shares a common interest in the built environment of continental Europe. Both artists engage with the ambiguous position of architecture as representing the concept and built reality, a physical space but also a lived place which is continually redefined and reimagined by its inhabitants and its society.
From the 8th of November to the 10th of November their work will be on show at Espace Lhomond near the Centre Culturel Irlandais, it will include work from various projects including Lynam’s “Fifty High Seasons”, and McCoy’s “and live the space of a door”.

Aisling McCoy is an Irish visual artist whose work looks at how we inhabit and imagine place, whether dealing with the utopian project of modernism or the dystopian space of exile. Her background as an architect is central to her practice, which investigates the roles of both architecture and photography in constructing the ideal. At Espace Lhomond she will show work from “and live the space of a door”, set at the Tempelhof airport in Berlin, which explores the “non-place” of the terminal as a parallel to the refugee experience of dislocation within its hangars.

Shane Lynam’s series and publication “Fifty High Seasons” is a direct response to Mission Racine. This regional development plan initiated in1963 by President de Gaulle set out to develop a wild and windy stretch of French coastline between Montpellier and Perpignan into a series of resorts. Avant-garde architects were hired to construct unique and unusual spaces which would be responsive to the local environment and focused on the individual. Mission Racine was not only about enriching the region, it included an 18% quota of social housing to allow more French citizens to take advantage of their time off work. It would become an alternative to the expensive Cote d’Azur without the high rise excesses of similar developments further south in Spain. “Fifty High Seasons” reflects on the cumulative effect of half a century of tourism on the innovative built environment established by Mission Racine, while revealing why the artist fell for its unique charm.

“Fifty High Seasons” is being exhibited in partnership with Galerie Bertrand Grimont. Shane Lynam's work will also be on show at Galerie Bertrand Grimont's booth at Paris Photo.

“and live the space of a door” is supported by the Next Generation Bursary Award from the Arts Council of Ireland