An evening on spills, traces, and accidental storytelling. Through an interactive exhibition, this evening explores Orla Kelly’s collection of spills, and questions the impact of spillages, and of alternative archives questioning how permanence can be built from temporary events.

“As a reliably clumsy person, for five years I have photographed everything I have accidentally spilled, not because any individual spill seemed significant, but because significance began to emerge through repetition. This has resulted in a collection, a digital archive of photographs of spillages each with short captions. In my archive of spills, mistakes, interruptions and fleeting moments accumulate into an alternative record of mundanity and time.” – Orla Kelly

A spill is almost always read as a failure, but this collection began as a way to find value in these mistakes, and preserve them before they ultimately disappear. Set within BAR OMI, the project asks what ‘spills’ exist within this space, how space can be represented through its lived realities: its stains, mistakes, repairs, imperfections and unintended traces.