AVRIL CORROONMaxed Out

After a guided tour of Avril Corroon’s exhibition at Sismógrafo, the artist invites you to bring in your credit or debit cards, expired or in date, for them to be melted in acetone. Both the deformed plastic and the metal within the destroyed cards will then be pressed along with flowers found around Sismógrafo’s neighbourhood. We will also capture airborne spores of smuts, moulds, and other invisible fungi, scraped from Sismografo’s carpet, walls and furniture, but found also on participant’s clothes and skins. These will be cultured in petri dishes, so that their development can be followed up in the future.

Avril Corroon (Ireland, 1991) is a visual artist working across moving image, performance, and sculpture to examine precarious living conditions including the housing crisis, wealth inequity and labour exploitation. Through making a 1:1 scale Porsche from cardboard disguised with a car dust cover, artisanal cheese from toxic mould collected from rented accommodation, or covertly filming whilst waitering poorly in a restaurant, she combines an absurd or dark humour with critique. She received an MFA from Goldsmiths University in 2019. Upcoming and past solo exhibitions include Got Damp at TACO (2023) in London, ‘Spoiled Spores’ curated by Sheena Barrett at the LAB, Dublin (2020) and ‘Just Do It’ at Ormond Studios, Dublin (2014). Her work has been exhibited and screened at The Feminist Supermarket at Ormston House, Limerick (2021), Work in Progress at South London Gallery (2020), ‘Forming a Residency Association’ at Lux (2020), Enclave (2018) in London, Hotel Maria Kapel in the Netherlands (2016) and Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, Dublin (2016). Her work has been collected by the Arts Council Ireland.