SYSTEM ARMING

Luan Gallery is delighted to present SYSTEM ARMING, a group exhibition featuring work by Nadia J. Armstrong, Kennedy Browne, Aisling Phelan, and Colin Martin.

The exhibition opened to the public on Wednesday  17th  September, with the official launch taking place on Saturday, 20th  September at 2:00 pm, featuring special guest speaker Dr. Francis Halsall. The exhibition will continue until Sunday  16th  November.

SYSTEM ARMING explores the complex ways digital technologies, artificial intelligence, and transhumanism intersect with contemporary power structures. Through sculpture, film, and installation, the exhibiting artists examine how data mining, algorithms, and machine learning shape our daily lives, and how these technologies are increasingly used to influence or control behaviour, reshaping human agency, perception, and collective intelligence. The works in this exhibition confront the tangible, real-world impacts of these systems, from the psychological strain of algorithmic manipulation to the environmental costs of energy-intensive data centres. SYSTEM ARMING invites audiences to consider the ethical, social, and existential questions of living in a world designed to anticipate, influence, and ultimately arm itself against us.

Aisling Phelan employs film and sculpture to question how digital infrastructures shape identity, surveillance, and control. Drawing on transhumanist and speculative fiction perspectives, her interactive installations probe the seductive yet troubling promises of self-optimisation and transcendence.

Nadia J. Armstrong’s newly commissioned installation Girl Hero imagines a techno-feminist future through a speculative protagonist. Tracing the entanglements of quantum communication, bodies, and machines, Armstrong envisions a “Quantum Imaginary” that resists technocracy and emerging forms of techno-feudalism.

Kennedy Browne’s Real World Harm interrogates the intersections of technology, surveillance, and labour. Expanding on a 2018 project, the installation uses immersive audio and sculptural elements – including 811 pages of Facebook data retrieved by Max Schrems – to foreground the human and material costs of sustaining digital infrastructures.

Colin Martin’s paintings explore our “prosthetic” relationship with technology, drawing on science fiction and histories of surveillance. From obsolete media and computer museums to the corporate architectures of Amazon and Tesla, his work reflects on how technology reshapes culture, politics, and everyday life. 

Information on the exhibition and accompanying upcoming events can be found at luangallery.ie and on Luan Gallery’s social channels @luangalleryathlone on Instagram and Luan Gallery on Facebook.   System Arming will continue until Sunday, 16th November. Admission to the gallery is free for groups and individuals. Tours for schools and groups can be arranged by contacting the gallery in advance. Luan Gallery is open to the public Tuesday to Saturday from 11 am – 5 pm and Sundays from 12 – 5 pm. 

This exhibition was supported by The Arts Council.