The Forbidden Sun

The Forbidden Sun transports the viewer into a world without clear boundaries or geographic markers, where natural and synthetic elements collide.

A major new body of work by Irish artist Robert Ellis. Using landscape imagery, the exhibition evokes the experience of growing up in an atmosphere of silence and shame where uncomfortable truths lingered beneath the surface. The exhibition takes its title from Jennifer Johnston’s How Many Miles to Babylon, a novel Ellis first read as a teenager, drawn to its restraint and the emotional charge of what remains unsaid.

Through photography, video, and ambient sound, The Forbidden Sun transports the viewer into a world without clear boundaries or geographic markers, where natural and synthetic elements collide. Steam rises from the earth as bubbling mud and geothermal activity meet the relentless presence of industrial machinery, grinding quarried stone into sand, awaiting its final transformation into concrete. These landscapes are sites of profound tension, living and evolving spaces shaped by unseen pressures and energies.

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