About this Event
Common Ground is a new programming partnership co-presented by Oakville Galleries and Sheridan College.
For our first edition, we present an artist talk by acclaimed animator, filmmaker and artist Aideen Barry, Barry will speak about their expansive and collaborative multidisciplinary practice in connection with Silent Songs, the artist’s first solo exhibition in Canada presented by Oakville Galleries. Bringing together works across film, animation, sculpture, and performance, the exhibition includes Barry’s new film, Embroidering the Earth’s Mantle (2025), which will receive its world premiere.
Based in Ireland, Barry creates work that uses visual illusion to give familiar subjects an unsettling quality. Her recent projects draw on folklore and historical research to explore how cultural memory survives, especially where traditions have been suppressed. Through experimental approaches to filmmaking, she creates imaginative worlds in which these histories find new forms of expression.
Over the course of her career, Barry has exhibited widely most notably at The Bangkok Art Biennial; FORMAT international festival of photography, UK; Salzburg Kunstverein, Austria; The Irish Museum of Modern Art PS; Ireland; CAC Malaga, Spain, The Headlands Center for the Arts; US; and Skaftfell; Iceland. Collaboration plays an important role in her practice, often extending beyond the visual arts working with artists, musicians designers and composers such as Peter Gabriel, William Kentridge, ᕇᑦRIIT and Irene Buckley. Barry’s projects develop in relationship to collaborators from different fields and backgrounds to unite creative processes in order to shape truly unique artworks.
Silent Songs is curated by Séamus Kealy with the support of Jenifer Papararo and Natalie Stone. This artist talk is programmed by Isabella Springett and Jasmine Yeung.
Oakville Galleries is a not-for-profit contemporary art museum that presents Canadian and international artists, with a commitment to connecting communities through contemporary art. Sheridan College is an Ontario postsecondary institution internationally recognized for its programs in visual arts and design.
Opening Reception of Aideen Berry: Silent Songs
Saturday, October 24, 2026 | 2:00–5:00 PM
Gairloch Gardens & Centennial Square, Oakville Galleries.
Event venue & nearby stays
Sheridan College Trafalgar Campus, 1430 Trafalgar Road, Oakville, Canada
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