The Morphology of The Other

Butler Gallery, The Castle, Kilkenny Daily 10am-1pm, 2-4.30pm Until Feb 28 056-7761106

A sense of foreboding has featured in much of Aideen Barry's work from the beginning. In her early, elaborately staged, poised performance works, recorded on video, Barry embodied gothic heroines, extreme in their appearance and their emotional intensity, doomed neurotic outsiders who challenged social and moral conventions. She did all this with theatrical flair and a lightness of touch.

Barry's work has developed significantly in every way since then, though all that still holds true. The obsessive compulsive quality has become a central subject matter since she became aware of her own obsessiveness. This is brilliantly explored in Vacuuming in a Vacuum(the vacuum at Nasa's Kennedy Space Centre), a film in which the desire for utter cleanliness literally transforms the human being.

It and other works address our contemporary fixation on the risks of contamination and infection, which is both reasonable and often, in effect, demented. Barry, incidentally, still aspires to be the first Irish woman in space. AIDAN DUNNE

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Ailbhe Ní Bhriain Galway Arts Centre Until Feb 27 091-565886