Off Guard

Aoife Bambury

Aoife Bambury is a Kildare based contemporary visual artist and sculptor, whose current practice is focused on modernist sculpture, using bronze as the core material.

Utilising her interest in popular culture, pop art and the designer toy movements, Bambury’s work includes abstracted elements from the animal world. Her work is mostly connected to the figurative and is intended to convey reactionary responses connected to our subconscious.

Through her process and working of the bronze her work can take on the appearance of different materials, and at first glance could be manufactured from vinyl or another plastic. This alchemy of how we view the objects around us is core to Bambury’s work as an artist. She continuously experiments with deeply contrasting patinas and with lacquer, and high gloss finishes on bronze. She wants to highlight the clash between high art and high street, and how these lines become blurred int he works of artists that she admires such as KAWS, Sterling Ruby and Murakami.

Aoife has studied at post graduate level at N.C.A.D. and at Crawford College, CIT, Cork. She learned bronze casting techniques during extended study periods in Burkina Faso, West Africa. Originally from Kerry, she currently lives and works in County Kildare. She is an emerging artist and her work
has been included in many group shows over the past few years, such as Sculpture in Context, CIACLA (Contemporary Irish Arts Centre Los Angeles) and the annual exhibitions at The Royal Ulster Academy. Aoife’s work has recently been purchased by the Arts Council of Ireland for their permanent collection.