Something for the Weekend: Ailbhe Ní Bhriain's cultural picks

Cork-based artist Ailbhe Ní Bhriain works with film, computer-generated imagery, collage, tapestry, print and installation.

Rooted in an exploration of imperial legacy, human displacement and the Anthropocene, her widely exhibited work regularly involves collaboration with musicians and composers.

The Dream Pool Intervals, an exhibition of new work by Ailbhe, opens at Dublin's Hugh Lane Gallery on 27th March. She talks to RTÉ Arena below:

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We asked Ailbhe for her choice cultural picks...

FILM

I just watched the 2023 Wim Wenders film Perfect Days - and it's such a perfect film! It follows the daily routines of a public toilet cleaner in Tokyo. He’s a solitary and mostly silent type, so it sounds like a zero-fun set up - but in fact the film is so full of joy. It’s beautifully shot and paced and manages to crack open your heart with the lightest touch.

Another perfect film I recently saw was Chantal Akerman’s D’Est, screened at Bozar in Brussels. It’s a multi-screen work shot in the former Soviet territories after the fall of the Berlin Wall; passages of everyday life unfold and loop on old TV monitors without any directive editing or explicit narrative. Again it doesn’t sound like great entertainment, but this sustained observation really creeps up on you, to become genuinely captivating and in the end, totally haunting.

BOOK

I’ve just finished re-reading White Noise by Don de Lillo and just started Gliff by Ali Smith. Completely different books, but both with vivid dystopian tilts and brilliantly sharp portraits of children. I first read White Noise when I was 19 so it was strange to revisit, basically at the same age as its harassed protagonist and with the scenarios of environmental disaster, fake news, hyper-capitalism and existential angst feeling less fictional than ever.

A book that I’m dying to get my hands on is Dorothy Cross’s Kinship. It charts her recent, remarkable project of repatriation, returning the mummified body of a man from Ireland to his homeplace in Egypt.

MUSIC

I recently discovered the music of Danish composer and viola player Astrid Sonne – the albums outside of your lifetime, Human Lines and most recently Great Doubt are all brilliant. Nils Frahm’s Music for Animals remains one of my favourite releases from the last couple of years (if you have 22 minutes to spare, spend it with the track Do Dream).

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At the moment Jeff Parker is a staple of home listening, thanks to my guitar-obsessed son, and my daughter has just discovered the songs of Kate & Anna McGarrigle, so has very happily brought them back into my life. Finally, I have been loving Petra, the recent release by Francesco Fabris. It was recorded in the interior of an old oil silo using deconstructed sound from found objects, processed field recordings and working with the 25-second reverb of the tank itself.

THEATRE

I’m really looking forward to seeing Eileen Walsh in Second Woman as part of the Cork Midsummer Festival. It’s a play inspired by the John Cassavetes' film Opening Night and unfolds over a 24-hour performance, with 100 different men (mostly non-actors) playing opposite Walsh, enacting the same break-up scene over and over. As I understand it, Walsh’s lines are scripted but the men are free to improvise. So it sounds like an incredible cocktail of repetition and unpredictability and sheer endurance.

I’m currently watching the four-part series Adolescence – it is pretty devastating and as good as every one of its rave reviews says. I’m also watching the epic, mad and deeply moving third season of Twin Peaks – or Twin Peaks: The Return. I started it while recovering from a flu over Christmas, so its vast weirdness was ramped up even further by some real-life fever.

I also recently finished all six zillion seasons of Gossip Girl. It was very bad and I never wanted it to end.

GIG

The recent Bonnie Prince Billy gig at The Everyman Theatre in Cork was one of the best gigs I’ve seen in ages. Full of risk and heart and total connection with the audience. I’m excited for the upcoming Kamasi Washington gig at Cork Opera House.

ART

I’m looking forward to seeing Danger Came Smiling, currently at Hayward Gallery in London - incredible work in collage by Linder, spanning 5 decades. And I will definitely be traveling to see Embrace by Klára Hosnedlová, opening at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin in April – it promises to be completely monumental and, as with all Hosnedlová’s work, minutely and impeccably crafted. A recent show I loved was Fergus Feehily at Temple Bar Gallery in Dublin - his work is insistently quiet and always manages to blow me away.

PODCAST

I listen to far more political podcasts than is good for me, so I find Philosophize This! by Stephen West a great antidote to the daily churn of news. It’s an amazing introduction to complex philosophical ideas - a guide I could have done with years ago when I dived into Heidegger with no context or armbands. In truth, I still don’t manage to retain much/any of it, but am grateful anyway for the momentary flashes of insight this podcast delivers.

And for trivia taken seriously and made very, very funny, I am hooked on The Rest is Entertainment, with Marina Hyde and Richard Osman.

TECH

I am very much in love with my new Eizo colour-calibrated computer monitor.

THE NEXT BIG THING...

Sounds from a Safe Harbour, taking place in Cork in September. This festival is a magic thing - artist-centred, brilliantly diverse, deeply collaborative and completely world class. It is curated by Mary Hickson, one of the most inspiring people working in this country at the moment.

The Dream Pool Intervals is at Dublin's Hugh Lane Gallery from 27th March – 28th September 2025 - find out more here.

Something for the Weekend: Ailbhe Ní Bhriain's cultural picks

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