Home Participants 24th Biennale of Sydney (2024) Breda Lynch

Breda Lynch

Left to right: Saule Dyussenbina, Achievements of National Economy, Fountain of Friendship of Peoples of the USSR (Moscow, Russia), 2023. Courtesy the artist © Saule Dyussenbina. Gordon Hookey, Terraist, 2014; Fuck off French Fried Frog Face Frick, 1995. Courtesy the artist and Milani Gallery © Gordon Hookey. Breda Lynch, Cake Bomb, 2016–21. Presentation at the 24th Biennale of Sydney was made possible with assistance from Culture Ireland. Courtesy the artist © IMMA Collection: Purchase, 2021. Exhibition Copy. Weaver Hawkins, Atomic Power, 1947. Purchased 1976, Art Gallery of New South Wales. Courtesy the artist © Estate of HF Weaver Hawkins. Eisa Jocson, Bikini, 2009–23; All is vain, 2009–23. Courtesy the artist © Eisa Jocson. Installation view, 24th Biennale of Sydney, Ten Thousand Suns, 2024, Art Gallery of New South Wales. Photograph: Christopher Snee.

Breda Lynch is an Irish visual artist working in a variety of media, including drawing, photography, print and digital media, video and installation. She engages with dialogues and discourses on queer feminisms, the western mystery tradition and occulture, appropriation and the economy of the image. Using found materials, Lynch crafts evocative pieces that touch on fragility and mortality. Simultaneously, she confronts societal norms and critiques oppressive power dynamics affecting marginalised communities.

Left to right: Saule Dyussenbina, Achievements of National Economy, Fountain of Friendship of Peoples of the USSR (Moscow, Russia) (wallpaper), 2023. Courtesy the artist © Saule Dyussenbina. Breda Lynch, Cake Bomb, 2016–21. Presentation at the 24th Biennale of Sydney was made possible with assistance from Culture Ireland. Courtesy the artist © IMMA Collection: Purchase, 2021. Exhibition Copy. Installation view, 24th Biennale of Sydney, Ten Thousand Suns, 2024, Art Gallery of New South Wales. Photograph: Document Photography.

Art Gallery of New South Wales

Cake Bomb, 2016–21
cyanotype to digital print

Presentation at the 24th Biennale of Sydney was made possible with assistance from Culture Ireland. Courtesy the artist © IMMA Collection: Purchase, 2021.

One evening in 1946 in Washington DC, United States, Vice Admiral William HP Blandy, ‘the Atomic Admiral’, and his wife posed alongside a bomb-shaped cake as they celebrated the achievements of Joint Army-Navy Task Force Number One – the body that oversaw atomic tests in the Pacific. The testing at Bikini Atoll displaced an entire Indigenous population and gave rise to the proliferation of the now iconic image of the mushroom cloud.

At the time, the photograph of the ‘cake bomb’, reproduced here by Breda Lynch, found its way to newspapers across the country. While applauded by some, the photo was generally regarded as indecent. Despite governments on either side of the Pacific having invested heavily in selling the atomic age to the masses, the mushroom cloud has endured as a symbol of global destruction and Western arrogance.

Lynch’s work explores the circulation, consumption and economy of images. Here, the artist resurrects the spectre and historical symbolism of the mushroom cloud, hinting at the absence of a single compelling image that captures the gravity of the world’s many contemporary crises.