The Refugee’s Armour -The Olivier Cornet Gallery, Dublin, Ireland In this exhibition Miriam McConnon presents the individual stories of young male refugees in paintings of personal objects that narrate their journey of displacement, of integration and of aspirations for the future. She brings a collective element to these individual experiences through the gesture of the exhibition. The work looks at the many layers to these stories, disenabling the categorization of ‘refugee’ to define these young men. Over the past twenty years Mc Connon has consistently made work around objects that reveal a human story. For this new body of she has conducted a series of interviews with several young men who have been displaced by war. Together they discussed themes of trauma, memory, safety, politics and the shared global responsibility for conflict. She recalls elements of their past stories and their hopes for their future through the display of objects that express the different layers of these narratives. Her work acts as an agency in which to give a voice to these young men’s experiences and that takes responsibility for the preservation of their personal stories.