Past Residents Anne Maree Barry
Anne Maree Barry’s artistic practice uses film to address connections within contemporary urban space, uniting ideas of memory, narrative, geography, sociology and architecture. The result being creative non fiction films that explore a sense of self and space, within a specific community. From subcultures to cities, from working with actors and non actors, her concern is to find a common thread that links the past and the present. Using a learnt methodology to present her research in a different manner than conventional documentary film – voice-over, music and narrative arcs based on real life, are conveyed in a layered hybrid form. The merging of these elements has a strong aesthetic feel and breaks from the traditional structure of documentary.
Barry lives and works at The Fire Station Artists’ Studios, Dublin. A graduate of Irelands National College of Art and Design and The Limerick School of Art, her work has been selected and screened at international film festivals, museums and public institutions, such as the Irish Film Institute, The Dublin International Film Festival, Curtas Vila do Conde Film Festival, Les Rencontres Internationales, Tampere Art Museum, Dublin City Gallery’s The Hugh Lane and The LAB, Dublin. Missing Green (2013) a research led documentary short film screened as part of the Irish Architecture Foundation’s Open House programme, Learning from Buildings at Pallas Projects, Dublin and was also shortlisted and nominated for a Radharc Award. Her most recent film project No Mean City (2015) was produced with assistance from The Liaison of Independent Film Makers of Toronto and Screen Training Ireland. The film has screened at the Irish Film Institute and in a gallery context at TULCA Festival of Visual Arts, Galway, curated by Mary Cremin.
At HIAP – Helsinki International Artist Programme, Barry will develop a new film project The White City of the North:
The visual aesthetic in No Mean City (2015) – a blizzard and long forgotten monuments, combined with a fragmented narrative – establishes ideas around how a city’s destruction can help us to visualise it’s future. I have used a fragmented narrative form in this film; an element that I intend to explore further in new work. I am currently experimenting with the idea of an unreliable or reliable narrator and the idea of trust in narration. Psycho-geographic walks and studies of the city of Helsinki and my surrounding environment at Suomenlinna will inform new work. Using the same methodology as Missing Green and No Mean City, I will research and make subsequent site visits to film locations and conduct interviews with a wide cross section of individuals. This will all combine to create a piece of work that is reflective of my time on the residency and of the city of Helsinki.