In the Presence of Birds is an exhibition by Gabhann Dunne that pokes curious fingers at the relationship between humans and animals. Its main inspiration is Buile Suibhne or Mad Sweeney, a medieval Irish poem in which a king is cursed by a priest to live the rest of his life as a bird. The poem is masterful at evoking a sense of place, something that the exhibition seems to take conscious measures to avoid. Many of the animals in the paintings are against backgrounds of almost pure colour, as if they, unlike their friends in Mad Sweeney, do not have a place in a world shaped largely by humans for humans. But this might also be a nod to the fact that what the visitor to the Molesworth Gallery is in the presence of is not birds but paintings of birds, which is to say arrangements of pigment. In any case, they will be at the gallery until 27 October.
