The MAC Launches ‘Climate in Action’ Series with Aisling O’Beirn’s Powerful Take on Light Pollution

The MAC is proud to present We Lose Sight of the Night, a major solo exhibition by Aisling O’Beirn – the first in a new series of exhibitions exploring climate and environmental change.

Across all three of the MAC’s galleries, O’Beirn’s work invites us to stop and look up – at the sky, at the stars we no longer see, and at what’s been quietly lost in our brightly lit world.

For billions of years, life has moved to the rhythm of day and night. But artificial light – so ordinary it barely registers – is now disrupting that cycle. The consequences for plants, animals, and even our own bodies are becoming harder to ignore.

O’Beirn, a Belfast-based artist originally from Galway, has spent over two decades exploring how art can make sense of big, tangled ideas – from entropy and balance to how science and politics collide. In this survey exhibition, she brings together new commissions and reworked older pieces that span from precise drawing and animation to strange, absurd sculptural machines.

At its heart, We Lose Sight of the Night is about how we try to understand the world – especially the parts that can’t be easily seen. Light pollution becomes a way into deeper questions: about consumer culture, environmental collapse, and the systems we live inside.

Aisling O’Beirn says:

"This is an amazing opportunity to present a wide range of my work spanning two decades across the MAC'S galleries. Much of my work explores my interest in highly complex subjects such as my current research into light pollution and the night sky. I approach the subject as a layperson opening up meaning and understanding through the art making process. My hope is that I and the viewer together find ways of understanding theoretical concepts associated with science astronomy and the environment in unexpected ways."

Hugh Mulholland Creative Director Visual Art at the MAC adds:

"This survey exhibition by Belfast based artist Aisling O'Brien is hugely significant, it is the largest presentation of her work to date and is the first in a series of exhibitions the MAC will programme this year addressing Climate in Action. Aisling has throughout her career presented creative, informative, thought-provoking work across a range of media to explain the world around us, most recently her exploration into the effects of light pollution and the impact it has on human, animal, and botanical balance."

This exhibition doesn’t offer easy answers – instead, it opens up space to reflect, question, and wonder. By focusing on something as deceptively simple as the night sky, O’Beirn leads us into a deeper awareness of the ways we’re reshaping our world, often without realising it.

We Lose Sight of the Night by Aisling O’Beirn runs at the MAC, Belfast 17 April – 22 June 2025 across all three galleries. More information can be found at themaclive.com. Follow @themacbelfast for the latest from the MAC