Ailbhe Ní Bhriain: An Experiment With Time

Irish artist's solo exhibition at CCA tackles time, climate and a post-apocalyptic future
Imagine a room removed from time: still yet fluid, alive with the consciousness of the past, present and future. Or a world flooded with water and wild animals, restored to its uncultivated historic state in a post-apocalyptic era. This eerie atmosphere of climate anxiety is alluringly captured by Ailbhe Ní Bhriain's new solo exhibition An Experiment With Time, named after the 1927 book of the same name by John William Dunne. The soldier-turned-scientist's research argued that all aspects of time exist simultaneously, but that humans experience them in a linear fashion. This is a concept that Ní Bhriain intricately entwines with her own concerns about global warming.
We're lulled into a dream-like state on entering the gallery. All is quiet but for a spacey score composed by sound artist Susan Stenger that quietly accompanies the films playing concurrently at both ends of this darkened room. Complex ideas are presented in an equally complex but not impossible-to-grasp way. We are shown human-made structures edited to appear flooded, and a chameleon perched motionless amongst the wires and circuit boards of a long-forgotten museum.
Another room features three collages: faceless children stand in the ruins of civilisation where a dog is barking, the ground visible through a hole in its stomach. Black snail shells decorate the slabs of Irish stone surrounding us that echo the longevity of geology, a detail that beautifully encapsulates the artist's heritage and idea of timelessness.
A third space almost resembles a museum, with mostly untitled prints lining the walls, but is a walk-in collage in itself. The floor is littered with hand-shaped globes that seem to sink into the ground, conveying similarities to waterlogged images in her films. This Irish artist's exhibition is a hypnotic collection that expertly draws attention to the looming threat of climate change. It's a clear danger that will merge the worlds of before and now into an inhabitable, flooded future.
Ailbhe Ní Bhriain: An Experiment With Time, CCA, Glasgow, until Saturday 19 March.