Luan Gallery | Athlone Arts and Tourism

Apocalypse Anxieties at Luan Gallery

Date: 27 April - 27 June 2024

A group exhibition guest curated by Kerry Guinan, featuring the work of Aideen Barry, Tom O’Dea, Léann Herlihy, Orla Punch, Christopher Steenson and Frank Sweeney

Apocalypse Anxieties — an exhibition at the end of the world — responds thematically, aesthetically, and affectively to an underground “nuclear bunker” installed by the Irish Government under Custume Barracks, Athlone during the Cold War. Guest-curated by artist Kerry Guinan, the exhibition employs the bunker as a symbol to raise critical questions about how catastrophes are prepared for, communicated, and survived — and by whom. Linking the existential threat of nuclear war to that of the climate crisis today, Apocalypse Anxieties holds space for the open expression of base survival fears at the levels of the individual, the species, and the Earth, while defending kinship and intimacy between these entities at the end of the world.

Supported by Arts Council Ireland.

Athlone Arts & Tourism, Elliott Road, Athlone, Co. Westmeath N37 TH22