The Visual Artists' News Sheet – July August 2024

Loughshinny Boathouse Studio Award

Fingal Arts Office is pleased to invite applications for the Loughshinny Boathouse Studio Award, a new studio residency award open to professional visual artists working in any medium. This opportunity offers a 9-month paid residency in Loughshinny Boathouse from September 2024 – May 2025.

The aim of the award is to enable artist(s) to research and develop new work in response to Fingal’s coastal environment, focusing on biodiversity and climate change.

The Award Includes:

→ Rent-free use of Loughshinny Boathouse

→ A fee of €15,000 for the 9-month period inclusive of VAT

→ An additional €5,000 towards insurance, materials, production, outcomes, documentation and engagement

Closing date for receipt of applications: Tuesday, 30th July 2024 at 4.00pm

For further information and to apply please visit: www.fingalarts.ie or email artsoffice@fingal.ie

Fingal, A Place for Art

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

July – August 2024

On The Cover

John Byrne, An Comórtas/The Contest, 2024, back-lit, digitally printed PVC, installation view, Carnegie Library, Swords. Commissioned through Fingal County Council’s public art programme, Infrastructure 2018-2024; photograph by Louis Haugh, courtesy of the artist and Fingal County Council.

First Pages

6. Roundup. Exhibitions and events from the past two months. 8. News. The latest developments in the arts sector.

Columns

9. Beside the Ocean of Time. Cornelius Browne considers holy days, sacred observations, and a date beyond calendar time. I Was Thinking One Night. Leah Corbett discusses the work of KCAT artist Lorna Cope Corrigan.

10. A Question of Pace. For her third column Lian Bell reflects on setting the pace of work as an arts freelancer. Curatorial Exchange. Mark O’Gorman discusses his Curatorial Exchange as part of participation in EXPO Chicago.

11. Hilary Heron: A Retrospective. Seán Kissane discusses an exhibition at IMMA celebrating the legacy of Hilary Heron. Buttercup: A Questioning Orientation. Sarah Browne outlines access methods for her new film.

Exhibition Profile

12. Apocalypse Anxieties. Michaële Cutaya considers the current group exhibition at Luan Gallery.

Socially Engage Practice

14. Hereditas. Séamus Nolan outlines a project exploring traveller culture and social history for Cairde Sligo Arts Festival.

In Focus: CGI / Digital Art

15. Digital Changelings. 1iing heaney, VAI Member

16. Creative Technology. Cailean Finn, VAI Member

17. Cyborg Ecologies. Jonah King, VAI Member

18. Wanderings in the Digital Soup. Gerard Carson, Digital Artist

Critique

19. Helen Hughes, ‘finding the most forgiving element’, installation view, Butler Gallery; photograph by Ros Kavanagh.

20. Pauline Rowan and Caline Aoun at The Dock

21. ‘Horses’ at Mermaid Arts Centre

22. Helen Hughes at Butler Gallery

23. Martin Healy at Crawford Art Gallery

24. Martina O’Brien at Galway Arts Centre

Festival / Biennial

26. Autotheory. Barbara Knežević considers vast and intimate scales at the 60th Venice Biennale.

27. Foreigners Everywhere. Linda Shevlin reports on themes of collectivism and resistance at the 60th Venice Biennale.

Public Art

28. Island City. Cork City Council Public Art Manager Valerie Byrne outlines a sculpture trail in Cork city centre.

29. Comórtas. Carissa Farrell discusses John Byrne’s new public artwork commissioned by Fingal County Council.

Member Profile

30. Biomorphic Forms. Joanne Laws interviews Eilis O’Connell about the evolution of her practice over five decades.

32. Do It Yourself. Clare-based artist Rachel Macmanus outlines the evolution of her art practice to date. Change of Climate. Environmental artist Evelyn Sorohan reflects on her practice and recent exhibition at glór.

33. Congruent. Sara Cunningham-Bell outlines her sculptural practice and current solo exhibition at F.E. McWilliam Gallery. Recognisable Bodies. Clare Scott reflects on the work of Wicklow-based artist and VAI Member Eoin O’Malley.

Last Pages

34. Opportunities. Grants, awards, open calls, and commissions.

35. VAI News. VAI staff report on recent activities nationwide.

36. VAI Lifelong Learning. Upcoming VAI helpdesks, cafés, and webinars.

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet:

Editor: Joanne Laws

Production/Design: Thomas Pool

News/Opportunities: Thomas Pool, Mary McGrath

Proofreading: Paul Dunne

Visual Artists Ireland:

CEO/Director: Noel Kelly

Office Manager: Grazyna Rzanek

Advocacy & Advice: Oona Hyland

Advocacy & Advice NI: Brian Kielt

Membership & Projects: Mary McGrath

Services Design & Delivery: Emer Ferran

News Provision: Thomas Pool

Publications: Joanne Laws

Accounts: Grazyna Rzanek

Special Projects: Robert O‘Neill

Board of Directors:

Michael Corrigan (Chair), Michael Fitzpatrick, Richard Forrest, Paul Moore, Mary-Ruth Walsh, Cliodhna Ní Anluain (Secretary), Ben Readman, Gaby Smyth, Gina O’Kelly, Maeve Jennings, Deirdre O’Mahony.

Republic of Ireland Office

Visual Artists Ireland

First Floor

2 Curved Street

Temple Bar, Dublin 2

T: +353 (0)1 672 9488

E: info@visualartists.ie

W: visualartists.ie

Northern Ireland Office

Visual Artists Ireland

109 Royal Avenue

Belfast

BT1 1FF

T: +44 (0)28 958 70361

E: info@visualartists-ni.org

W: visualartists-ni.org

Page 27

TAKE A BREATH

Exploring the Politics of Breath 14 June 2024—17 March 2025

Admission Free Visit imma.ie

Ag Déanamh Iniúchadh ar Pholaitíocht na hAnála 14 Meitheamh 2024—17 Márta 2025

Saorchead Isteach Tabhair Cuairt ar imma.ie

IMAGE: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Air Conditioning (2020), 2022. Inkjet print on paper, mounted on dibond, 90x365cm. © Lawrence Abu Hamdan. Courtesy of the artist and mor charpentier

ÍOMHÁ: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Air Conditioning (2020), 2022, Scairdphrionta ar pháipéar, leagtha ar dibond, 90x365cm. © Lawrence Abu Hamdan. Le caoinchead an ealaíontóra agus mor charpentier

Brian Lalor Retrospective

Triple Self-Portrait in the Studio, etching, 49 x 49cm, edition of 30, 1988

A retrospective survey of the work of west Cork-based artist and writer Brian Lalor, curated by art historian Vera Ryan.

Dublin

ArtNet dlr

‘Translucence’ by Éadaoin Glynn was on display from 27 May to 30 June. These paintings are moments of female interior life. The women are young, vulnerable and solitary. Their skin is translucent, petal soft, easily bruised. They are sleeping, looking into the distance, daydreaming, sobbing, maybe looking for answers. The source material for the portraits includes unknown young women from the Limerick Museum Archive, Glynn’s daughter and Nadine Abdel-Taif from Gaza, Palestine.

artnetdlr.ie

City Assembly House

A joint exhibition by artists Rachel Burke and Niamh Moran was shown in the Knight of Glin Exhibition room at City Assembly House, home of the Irish Georgian Society. Titled ‘Daydream’, the exhibition immersed visitors in a world where nostalgia, personal narratives, and the interplay between dreams and reality unfold through the artists’ unique perspectives. Burke and Moran, both art educators and storytellers, curated a predominantly drawing-based show which was on display from 13 to 17 June. cityassemblyhouse.ie

Kevin Kavanagh

Kevin Kavanagh presented ‘Fancy Situations’, a solo exhibition by Salvatore of Lucan from 6 to 29 June, which included a series of new oil paintings. The exhibition coincided with the launch of a new publication by Salvatore of Lucan, Fancy Situations, Dead Present, Etc., which was published by the gallery. The publication was produced by Brian Teeling, designed by Keith Nally, and featured a specially commissioned essay by Irish journalist and author, Megan Nolan.

kevinkavanagh.ie

Belfast

Casino Marino

‘The List and The Line’ with Alan Phelan and Mark Swords brings together two very different art practices in a responsive installation. Both artists interconnect conflicting histories through the act of making – with complex collage paintings, layered Joly screen photographs, text works, assemblages and sculptures. The personal is thrown together with the national, consumerism is jumbled with colonialism, visual narratives tumble into abstraction, and pleasure is maybe more pizza box than portico perfection. The exhibition continues until 29 July. casinomarino.ie

Draíocht

In ‘Whispers of rhythm balance on my hands’, by Eleanor McCaughey, she works across painting, sculptural assemblage, mixed media, video and textiles. Her work is continually in flux, evolving through research, studio-based experimentation and personal experiences of healing from endometriosis and infertility, out of which her conceptual concerns take form. The work has personal and hidden meanings that are bound up in learned, lost and altered theological ideologies and humanistic notions. On display from 12 June to 28 September. draiocht.ie

SO Fine Art Editions

‘Open Eye Signals’ by Cork-based visual artist Shane O’Driscoll presented a series of new works in response to the artist’s recent residency at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris. During his time in Paris, O’Driscoll documented the cityscape on a daily basis, and has reimagined his recordings of form, colour and composition into dynamic abstract works. These screenprints and letterpress prints seek to embody his experience of the city. On display at SO Fine Art Editions from 1 to 29 June.

sofinearteditions.com

ArtisAnn Gallery

Belfast-based artist Andrew Haslett’s show ‘The Land of Mag Mell’ examined the mythical Celtic realm of Mag Mell, achievable through death or glory. Mag Mell is a paradise, either on an Island off the coast of Ireland, or below the Atlantic Ocean. Haslett’s art follows in the style of the medieval renaissance, with intensely detailed paintings and drawings that take many months to complete. ‘The Land of Mag Mell’ ran at ArtisAnn Gallery from 5 to 29 June.

artisann.org

Belfast Photo Festival

Belfast Photo Festival marked its tenth anniversary in June with a full programme, animating public spaces and the city’s built heritage with exhibitions from a host of international visual artists, including the island of Ireland premiere of Richard Mosse’s film, Broken Spectre, 2023. This year’s festival, supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Belfast City Council, Arts & Business Northern Ireland, and Alexander Boyd Displays, explored the theme of Divergence. On display from 6 to 30 June.

belfastphotofestival.com

Naughton Gallery

‘Outside the Echo Chamber’ by Andrew White, is showing until 11 July as part of Belfast Photo Festival 2024. For this project, White documented his journeys with friends in search of swimming holes. Notably, 2017 was Donald Trump’s first year in office as President of the United States, and White found himself stumbling upon moments of pure Americana beyond the comfort of his liberal bubble. The work simultaneously documents community, friendship, and togetherness whilst capturing glimpses of a nation on the brink of significant change and discord. naughtongallery.org

Belfast Exposed

‘Inquiry’ by Chad Alexander, was presented by Belfast Exposed from 2 May to 29 June. The series was created in Belfast and centres on people, predominantly men, and urban spaces that the artist knows personally or has encountered by chance. Alexander explores how conflict has impacted and shaped certain masculine identities, which are often associated with violence and manliness. The artist aims to explore how a heritage of conflict is dealt with and the emergence of new violence upon people and communities.

belfastexposed.org

Catalyst Arts

The group exhibition, ‘soft listings’, was developed in collaboration and conversation with Sorcha McNamara, Tara McGinn, Phillip McCrilly, and Eslam Abd El Salam – and with Catalyst Arts Co-Director, Silvia Koistinen. The process welcomed the reimagining of existing works along with the development of new works, weaving new and old together. The exhibition presented a collection of multi-sensory works in the form of sound, sculpture, scents, and visual and edible art. On display at Catalyst Arts from 6 June to 6 July. catalystarts.org.uk

QSS Gallery

‘Counting the Days’ presented a series of paintings by Ashley B. Holmes, made in recent years in response to the death of the artist’s mother. The works, titled according to the number of days since she passed away, form a timeline. They all represent the pond on the family’s farm where her ashes were scattered. This same image recurs in all of the works, but the qualities of the scene change to subtly convey the durational process of mourning. On display from 6 to 27 June.

queenstreetstudios.net

Chad Alexander, Krip, 2024, from the series ‘Inquiry’; photograph © and courtesy of the artist.

Eleanor McCaughey, ‘Whispers of rhythm balance on my hands’; courtesty of the artist and Draíocht Arts Centre.

Niamh Moran, Calshot Spit, Lightship, 2024, mixed media on paper; image courtesy of the artist and City Assembly House.

Regional & International

Artlink

‘Speculative Artefacts’ by Pascal Ungerer was presented from 25 May to 23 June. Renowned for his captivating contemporary landscape paintings, Ungerer delved into the realms of speculative landscapes and peripheral topographies with this exhibition. He’s fascinated with the in-between spaces or ‘edgelands’, where urban and rural environments converge, exploring the tensions that arise in these transitional spaces. His keen eye for obsolete infrastructure on the fringes of human habitation gives his paintings a unique narrative.

artlink.ie

Laneway Gallery

‘Double Double Toil and Trouble’ was an exhibition by Kata Kukla and Ian Malone that explored the nomadic disintegrated doppelgänger identity of an immigrant, and a re-imagining of Millet’s peasant figures from the 1800s, which depict the ceaseless toil of rural workers, through the lens of the twenty first century. Such doppelgängers have appeared in the folklore, myths, religious concepts, and traditions of many cultures throughout human history. On display from 6 to 22 June.

lanewaygallery.ie

Lismore Castle Arts

‘Vertices’ brings together two very different artists, Olga Balema and Anne Tallentire, in discussion over several months in consideration of the unique space at The Mill in Lismore. According to the press release, the progression of ‘Vertices’ can be mapped out through a series of meeting points, such as the site visit to The Mill, Zoom meetings, studio visits, and the exhibition install. Thoughts and enquiries continually develop from these points of contact, informing both artists’ work in response. The exhibition continues until 18 August. lismorecastlearts.ie

Burren College of Art

‘Beyond Brushstrokes: Between Matter and Memory’ presented an engaging new movement of rural emerging painters. This group exhibition explored the evolving landscape of painting, where traditional techniques meet innovative expressions. It showcased a departure from conventional painting, embracing experimental mark-making that captures both the physical and emotional landscapes. By Matthew Mitchell, Kaye Maahs, Sara Foust, Trudi Van Der Elsen, Marianne Potterton, Gerry O’Mahony, and Mary Fahy. 30 May to 21 June. burrencollege.ie

Laois Arthouse

‘Quercu’ by Alan Meredith brought together a new body of work in his first solo exhibition in County Laois. Oak is very important to Meredith, and it is the dominant material that he has used for this exhibition, ‘Quercu’, which is the scientific name for Oak. The artist began working with wood from an early age. His work to date straddles the boundaries of craft, sculpture and architecture and has been exhibited nationally and internationally. On display from 5 to 21 June.

arthouse.ie

Limerick City Gallery of Art

LAST ACT, 2024, by Marie Hanlon is a large-scale, synchronised video installation made in collaboration with composer Rhona Clarke. The work presents the climate crises as something both real and abstract, and as such, it mirrors the human response to a changing earth. Weather events make up most of the visual material with real footage of drought, flooding, wildfires and melting ice slowly building towards a wide screen shot of dark engulfing waters. The exhibition continues at LCGA until 25 August. gallery.limerick.ie

Custom House Studios + Gallery

From 30 May to 23 June, Custom House Studios + Gallery presented an exhibition by Dietrich Blodau titled ‘Two island peoples in the same sea of struggle and hope. Cuba and Ireland’. The show was opened by the Cuban Ambassador to Ireland, Bernardo Guanche Hernández, and presented a range of the artist’s expressive observational works in print, pastel, aquarelle. Blodau was a founding tutor of the printmaking department at LSAD and contributed to the early development of the Exhibition of Visual Arts (now EVA International). customhousestudios.ie

Lavit Gallery

‘Coalescence’ was a group exhibition featuring work by four artists whose practices bring together disparate elements, components or motifs through the mediums of painting, drawing, collage and sculpture. All four artists are based in the Kinsale/ Innishannon area of County Cork and are brought together to illustrate some commonalities in approach across their highly individual practices. In each case there is a coalescence of elements to create a whole, albeit for quite distinct reasons and outcomes. On display from 12 June to 6 July. lavitgallery.com

Signal Arts Centre

‘Instinct and Feel – Mark Making’ by Philip Murphy included both landscape and figurative pieces to allow the viewers the time to consider and experience their own instinctive reactions to the world around them. The presented figurative works express the artist’s mystification about how disparate instruments and players can come together – the interaction between the musicians; the notes, chords, harmonies and space between; and the integral role of audiences in the musical experience. On display from 10 to 23 June. signalartscentre.ie

House of Lucie Gallery

‘Reflecting on 100 Years of The Irish State’ by Deirdre Brennan was awarded bronze in People/Culture in The Tokyo International Foto Awards 2023, and was recently exhibited at the House of Lucie, Budapest, Hungary. In Brennan’s series, members of the public pose with a 1920s Bakelite hand mirror, reflecting on the past hundred years. When asked their opinion about the state of the nation since independence from Britain, subjects responded with both positive and negative commentary. On display from 6 to 20 June.

houseoflucie.org

Leitrim Sculpture Centre

‘Monumental Failure’ by Darn Thorn focused on twentieth-century defence bunkers and the problematic socio-historical context they inhabit – in particular, the rise and fall of totalitarian systems of government and the legacy they have left on the landscape. The exhibition focused on Naziera bunkers that form part of the ‘Atlantic Wall’ in Denmark and also Russian Imperialist and Soviet-era bunkers in Latvia that were strategic defence points against allied territorial incursion. On display from 31 May to 22 June.

leitrimsculpturecentre.ie

The Model

For the centenary of Jack Butler Yeats’s silver medal at the Paris Olympic Games in 1924 (for his painting, The Liffey Swim, 1923), The Model presents ‘The Sligo Wave’, an exhibition that explores Sligo’s place in the development of painting in Ireland. Featuring artworks by 16 artists, created in the last century. Important figures in Irish art, such as Jack B Yeats, Patrick Collins and Seán McSweeney, are included alongside a host of contemporary artists who have found inspiration in the county. The exhibition continues until 7 September. themodel.ie

Darn Thorn, ‘Monumental Failure’ installation view, Leitrim Sculpture Centre; photograph courtesy of the artist.

Tinka Bechert, Untitlted 1, 2020, oil and acrylic on canvas; image courtesy of the artist and The Model.

Sarah Iremonger, 3 Pivotal Vessels, multiple countries and times, 2021, watercolour on paper, 38 x 29 cm; image courtesy of the artist and Lavit Gallery.

THE LATEST FROM THE ARTS SECTOR

In Search of Hy-Brasil

Ireland’s National Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2023, In Search of Hy-Brasil, exhibits at Solstice Arts Centre this summer as part of a national tour engaging the general public in a wide-ranging programme of events that further elaborate on the core message of the project.

Curated by a team of five architects: Peter Carroll, Peter Cody, Elizabeth B Hatz, Mary Laheen, and Joseph Mackey; In Search of Hy-Brasil derives from an intense engagement with the islands of Ireland and is a direct provocation to all of us to reimagine the vast combined territory of land and ocean we call our home. Geographically remote and mainly peripheral to contemporary discourse, our islands are by necessi-

In Search of Hy-Brasil [Cont.]

In Search of Hy-Brasil puts our islands’ diverse communities, culture and experiences right at the centre of the discourse surrounding our shared future. To the forefront of our imagination. The installation offers an immersive experience that shifts between the local and the territorial, the micro and the macro, to make explicit the implicit intelligence of these most remarkable of places.

In Search of Hy-Brasil will be held in Solstice Arts Centre, Navan, from Saturday 22 June to Saturday 24 August. Solstice has made the whole building available to Hy-Brasil for the purpose of disseminating the message that lies at the heart of the project, with Solstice Gallery containing the main installation of the exhibition, and accompanying installations by As an gCeo, BothAnd Group, and Sarah Rhodes available to view throughout the building.

A supporting programme of cultural events, ‘Island Narratives’, will also take place around the content of the installation. This programme takes the form of the accompanying installations, film screenings, and related talks featuring special guests.

miniVAN | Illustration & Design

In the latest edition of the miniVAN, Production Editor Thomas Pool interviews artists, designers, and illustrators Annie Mar Forrester, Conor Nolan, and Stephen Heffernan about their practice and careers, the intersection of craft and illustration, and the advent of AI marketing!

The miniVAN is the online magazine published by Visual Artists Ireland. Featuring fascinating interviews with avant-garde street artists, award-winning directors, pioneering tattoo artists, renowned art historians and conservators, cutting-edge animators, and unique artists with daring practices.

The miniVAN explores the visual arts with an accessible view of all aspects of careers and practice that make up our visual community.

To read these articles and more please visit: visualartistsireland.com/category/minivan

King Ping Pong 2024

King Ping Pong announces its 2024

ty robust, resilient and inventive places. They have long been a significant crucible for language, music and song bound up with lived experience and support a rich and unique biodiversity. Their small communities, existing on the margins of viability, have embedded in their social order and cultural memory a deep knowledge and understanding of the ocean, land and resource management and the practice of maintaining sustainable environments. They’ve long thrived successfully and creatively with less while building and nurturing a rich and complex ecology. [Cont. below]

inter-art-organisational table tennis tournament was won, in Crawford Art Gallery, by Fergal Gaynor, who represented Enclave Review.

Sixteen competitors battled it out at the tournament, which was held on 13 June in Crawford - the competition's first foray out of Dublin.

Gaynor beat Dobz O'Brien (for the National Sculpture Factory) in the nail-biting final in front of a highly energised crowd.

In addition to all the tournament excitement, a brand new krazy ping pong table by Elinor O'Donovan was unveiled. This is the 10th table to be accessioned to the National Novelty Ping Pong Table Collection since 2016. Along with Elinor's Got the Snip, 6 other tables from the collection continue to be exhibited in Crawford until 7th July.

Artist Workspaces Scheme

The Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Catherine Martin T.D., announced details of a new pilot scheme that will enable Local Authorities to increase the provision of Artist Workspaces across Ireland.

Research conducted by this Department, and ongoing engagement with the creative and night-time economy sectors, over the last number of years has revealed demand for artist workspaces far outweighs supply and that there is a widespread shortage of creative spaces such as studios and performance spaces.

The Department recognises that Local Authorities are instrumental in delivering the infrastructure necessary to provide a number of artists´ workspaces nationwide. Almost half of all Visual Artists’ Workspace buildings (43%) are owned by Local Authorities. In view of this the Department engaged with a number of Local Authorities ahead of developing this scheme.

The Local Authority arts offices also play a crucial role in the growth, promotion and sustainability of the arts in Ireland including support to artists through grants, residencies and career development in their respective areas.

This €6 million funding is in line with the Government’s commitment under The Programme for Government to increase

the provision of affordable workspaces for artists and creative practitioners and ensure the timely delivery of arts and culture capital investment commitments, as outlined in Project Ireland 2040.

Features of the Pilot Artist Workspaces scheme include:

• Local Authorities are invited to propose capital projects for Artist workspaces which are fit for purpose, design focused, accessible and affordable.

• Funding will be made available for projects that focus on the delivery of infrastructure to increase availability and access to Artist Workspaces.

• Funding of €6 million is being provided by the Department and each Local Authority can apply for up to €150,000/€300,000 (depending on their location) for a single project under the scheme and would itself provide match funding of 40%. This match funding will bring the overall value of the scheme to €10 million.

• Capital grants up to a maximum of €300,000 will be made available to the following densely populated Local Authority areas should they apply; Cork City Council, Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Council, Fingal County Council, Galway City Council, Limerick City and County Council, Louth County Council, South Dublin County Council, Waterford City and County Council;

• Capital grants up to a maximum of €150,000 will be made available to the remaining Local Authorities.

ForM Sculpture Exhibition 2024

The ForM Sculpture Exhibition in Bangor Castle’s Walled Garden was officially opened by the Mayor of Ards and North Down Councillor Jennifer Gilmour at a special event on Thursday 30 May.

The Ards and North Down Borough Council exhibition, now in its 13th year, is a unique opportunity for artists to create pieces inspired by the garden. With over 40 sculptures located throughout the garden, the exhibition invites visitors to reflect on the relationship between art and nature

and view art in a different way. Visitors are invited to explore the garden and seek out the artworks in the greenery. At the launch event, the winners of the 2024 ForM Competition were announced and presented with prizes. The competition was judged by a panel of art experts - Betty Brown, Amanda Croft and Pandora Butterfield. This year’s Award Winners are: 1st Place – Anushiya Sundaralingam, 2nd Place – Joy Gray, 3rd Place – Sally Houston. Helen Hanse and Lucy Mulholland were both Highly Commended.

New Curator of 41st EVA International EVA International announced the appointment of Eszter Szakács as Curator of the Guest Programme of the 41st EVA International – Ireland’s Biennial of Contemporary Art. Szakács joins a curatorial team that includes Iarlaith Ní Fheorais and Roy Claire Potter (Selectors of EVA’s Platform Commissions for the 41st edition) and members of the EVA team led by EVA Director Matt Packer in developing a programme across venues, spaces, and partnerships in Limerick city, due to take place from 29 August to 26 October 2025.

New Director of the NSF

Sarah Searson has been announced as the new director of the National Sculpture Factory. Searson has extensive leadership experience in the Irish arts and education sector. Previous roles include Arts Officer, Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council, Head of Creative Arts and Media at ATU Galway, Director of The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon, and Interim Director of the Tyrone Guthrie Centre. Sarah has led key advisory roles in arts and cultural policy. She has worked on boards with diverse governance and operational structures, including Rua Red, Pallas Studios Dublin, Leitrim Design House, and Galway Arts Centre and was chair of the Arts Officers Association of Ireland. Her governance in education experience extends to serving on the Governing Body of Maynooth University and IT Sligo, now ATU. She has led significant arts information projects and developed several key festivals.

‘In Search of Hy-Brasil’, installation view, Venice Architecture Biennale 2023; photograph by Ste Murray, courtesy of Solstice Arts Centre.

Plein Air

Beside the Ocean of Time

CORNELIUS BROWNE CONSIDERS HOLY DAYS, SACRED OBSERVATIONS, AND A DATE BEYOND CALENDAR TIME.

RAISED RELIGIOUSLY, I grew up genuflecting before holy dates. Superimposed over our humdrum year was a heavenly calendar of feast days, of saints and obligation. No matter where my birth fell in Earth’s annual trip around the sun, I was due to be named Cornelius, after my father. There was satisfaction, however, when it was later realised that 16 September is also the feast day of Saint Cornelius. The veneration of dates is now ingrained, and I’ve never freed myself from the habit.

At the age of 12, for want of reading material, I read from cover to cover our old taped-together bible, and out of its time-worn pages, I emerged an atheist. By this stage, I’d found a new religion in the Church of Art. During my teenage years, holy art dates included 16 September, the day Kate Bush released my favourite album, Hounds of Love, in 1985. However, the date I bow to a little deeper is 32 June 1968 – a day, of course, that calendrically never existed.

On this date, outside calendar time, the Tory Island painter, James Dixon, painted The Gypsy Moth Rounding Cape Horn. On that non-day during the summer of 1968, I too was suspended outside time, still in my mother’s womb, in the heart of Glasgow. The gestation of Dixon’s visionary art covered most of his long lifetime, spent almost entirely on his rugged island home, off the coast of Donegal, with rare visits to the mainland. Leaning into his twilight years, Dixon encountered the English artist, Derek Hill, painting outdoors on a trip to Tory, on a summer morning in 1956. Upon observing Hill’s depiction of the village, the old islander reckoned he could do better. So began a friendship that lasted until Dixon’s death in the summer of 1970. Hill gifted Dixon paints and paper, and so a painter was born.

Habitually, Dixon left a small rectangle of the paper uncovered, pencilling into

this space his signature, the painting’s title, and the day and month next to the year –whereas for most artists, the year normally suffices. His wild paint is anchored to this precise time. I have always felt an anchorage to Dixon, possibly because I too was spurred on by the gift of paints from Derek Hill. As years pass, painting outdoors in the buffeting weather of Donegal, enduring attachments to other artists help me stand my ground.

In 1994, the Orkney Islands writer, George Mackay Brown, was unexpectedly shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Beside the Ocean of Time (Edinburgh: Polygon, 1994), shows time to be slippery in nature, its pages swimming between centuries with the litheness of a selkie. On Booker evening, I watched the television coverage live from London. The BBC panel were dismissive of Brown’s novel, until the final speaker, poet Tom Paulin, sang its praises in conveying a “sacral, primitive, highly sophisticated and at the same time deeply naïve view of the world.” Brown was watching the same broadcast in Stromness, having not travelled to attend the gala dinner.

Echoing Dixon, across his long life, Brown rarely left the island. He journeyed abroad just once, after receiving a scholarship to be spent on foreign travel. Thus, during the summer of 1968, George Mackay Brown visited Donegal, Galway and Connemara. That same summer, Dixon painted The Gypsy Moth on June 32, while my mother was stuck in Glasgow, anticipating my arrival, and homesick for Donegal. I’ve never ventured into the world further than Scotland, and last left Ireland 35 years ago. However, stand still on Earth, let the day go by, and one is still travelling at 67,000 miles per hour.

Cornelius Browne is an artist based in County Donegal.

Work

in Focus: KCAT Artists

I Was Thinking One Night

FOR THE FOURTH KCAT COLUMN LEAH CORBETT DISCUSSES THE WORK OF KCAT ARTIST LORNA COPE CORRIGAN.

THE MOMENT LORNA Cope Corrigan knew she was an artist was as a young child, when she poured a tin of bright red paint over herself and a dull grey tractor in the farmyard of her family home. This colourful epiphany provided the foundation for her future as an artist, setting her on a path of exploration and curiosity about the world around her. Last year, I had the pleasure of working closely with Lorna as curator of ‘I was thinking one night’ (23 June – 14 July 2023) in KCAT Arts Centre, Callan – an exhibition of her works from the past two decades. Visiting Lorna in her studio in KCAT, as she painted the wheels of her mobility aid red and blue in advance of the exhibition launch, I understood that her inclination to experiment and push boundaries remained.

The same playful spirit is present throughout her work. Prolific in her output, Lorna’s studio bursts with life and colour. Energy flows between paintings and drawings, creating a lively, vibrant hum. She layers textured backgrounds with intricate lines and repeated patterns; new details emerge with each examination. Circles, dots, stripes, squares, and chevrons appear throughout, lending a sense of harmony to the vibrant momentum. The work joyfully celebrates friendship, community, and nature.

Lorna’s dreams are an important source of inspiration for her work. Specific details and colours come to her in her sleep, like visions: “Sometimes I can see red and green and blue.” Translating these with pen and paint, the scenes that emerge are bursting with people and animals set in vivid landscapes. The figures depicted rarely appear in isolation; her artworks are not about the individual. Instead, they are supported by a cast of characters, human and non-human, all joined together in a kind of collective dance. Flowers, trees, and creatures nestle into a hillside, a bird rests on a cow’s back,

figures float dreamily across a body of water.

I recently watched Donna Haraway: Story Telling for Earthly Survival (2016), a film directed by Fabrizio Terranova which provides insights into Haraway’s life and work. An influential feminist author and philosopher, Haraway resists hegemonic modes of thinking and proposes new perspectives and ways of living. In the film she discusses the importance of building life-long kin, integrating with nature, and encouraging different models of family. She invites us to imagine a powerful movement of communities coming together with a common aim “to live for the recuperation of the critters of the earth, the human and the non-human.”

Lorna’s work similarly offers up a world in which humans and animals coexist, where community is celebrated, and nature is thriving and abundant. Crucially it avoids seeming sentimental and instead feels radical and defiant. The subjects of her paintings appear to be in a state of intimate, heightened sensitivity and receptivity, to each other and to their environment. They often have their arms up, waving or reaching out from their lush surroundings. They are summoning us, gathering us from across the world – different cultures and species, joining together. Haraway believes that “some of the best thinking is done as storytelling.” Lorna weaves together details from her dreams, her travels, her encounters with friends and colleagues, and tells a story of togetherness and hope for the future.

Lorna Cope Corrigan is currently working towards a solo exhibition in Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich, Belfast, in Autumn 2024. kcat.ie/lorna-corrigan

Leah Corbett is a curator and co-founder of Muine Bheag Arts in Carlow. leahcorbett.net

Cornelius Browne, Storm Boat, 2024, oil on board; photograph by Paula Corcoran, courtesy of the artist.

Lorna Cope Corrrigan, Dreamland detail view, 2016, acrylic on canvas; image courtesy of the artist and KCAT.

Art Work A Question of Pace

FOR HER THIRD COLUMN IN THE SERIES LIAN BELL REFLECTS ON SETTING THE PACE OF WORK AS AN ARTS FREELANCER.

HAVING SPENT YEARS making and watching live performance, I am attuned to how pace functions within the work; I’m now learning to notice how it shapes a working practice itself. The topic of pace recurs in recent conversations, often in relation to my decision to prioritise travelling without flying. It also arises when I’m coaching, particularly with people at risk of burnout. And these days, being a body with 46 years on the clock, means I am constantly, if subtly, monitoring and adjusting my own pace of work.

I am learning how important pacing is for me to maintain good relationships with the work and the world. Maybe it’s having worked in the arts for a long time, feeling work ebb and flow over several decades. Maybe it’s due to the growing importance of climate change in my world-awareness, positioning myself conceptually as a small being within a vast timeframe, both human and non-human. Maybe it’s also the oncoming freight train of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the worry that if I can’t find a way to use it for my own benefit, it’ll run me over. Might AI help me safeguard more creative or leisure time?

I’m trying not to talk about slowing down. Your ideal pace may not be the same as mine, and our paces vary over time. Those of us with caring responsibilities, multiple jobs, physical limitations, or heavy financial burdens, rarely have the luxury of setting our own pace – although, I question whether working slower should be considered a ‘luxury’. The crux of the matter for me is that my creative work is greatly enriched by leaving time for it to breathe.

Like all arts freelancers, my work-pace is erratic, week to week, year to year. I worked doggedly (and happily) throughout my early career, followed by a period of overwork and some significant burnout, through the abrupt pandemic downshift, and most recently, the energetic limitations that perimenopause throws at me. For a long time, I knew I could always just work that bit more; I could always squeeze something else in. Until I couldn’t. Coming up to the absolute edge of my own capacity, and going past it, was a real lesson: I have a finite amount of energy and time – what do I want to use it for?

Those of us with solitary workspaces don’t always know how others work. I look at social media posts of artists I admire and measure myself against what I imagine their work-pace to be, invariably feeling inadequate. Recently, an artist I consider to be an inspiring way-maker in his lasting, authentic, multi-faceted career, said he wonders if he’s lazy.

I learn from colleagues with disabilities and long-term chronic illnesses, who have no choice but to think about pace all the time – whether by taking naps, having access riders to support their work, or using

‘spoon theory’ to describe their fluctuating energy levels for daily activities. I note in my own body how (ironically) unsettling it can feel, when being challenged to slow right down.

In her book, How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (Melville House Publishing, 2019), the writer and artist Jenny Odell talks of “resistance-in-place”. Not running away from it all, “dropping out”, or searching for a quiet life elsewhere, but finding techniques to embody the pace you crave right here. Odell advocates for resisting the pull towards productivity and resisting ones existence being appropriated by a capitalist value system, stating: “To remain in this state takes commitment, discipline, and will. Doing nothing is hard.”

Odell also discusses the merits of being “too weird or too difficult” to be processed in a standardised or streamlined manner. I see this as an additional value of artists: to not fit easily into standardised processes or modes; to add complication by wanting to do things in a way that works for them, rather than being complicit in a frictionless system. By being unafraid to irritate, you embolden others around you to do the same. Artists remind us that there are other ways of living.

Setting my own work-pace goes handin-hand with a belief that slowness is a human right. By slowing down, I try to support those who can’t. I am open about how I slow-pace my work, avoiding adding to a miasma of competitive busy-ness. Those of us who can somewhat choose our own pace can be the grit in the machine. Being plural in my multi-disciplinary practice is one intentional strategy of both keeping myself questioning, and resisting being streamlined. Shapeshifting is a form of resistance to productivity, to rationalisation, to measurable outcomes.

I would like to leave you with some questions: Who or what sets the pace you work at? Where is it within your power to resist an unwanted pace? What if we collectively adopted a praxis of rush-refusal?

Lian Bell is an artist and arts manager based in Dublin. lianbell.com

Curatorial

Curatorial Exchange

MARK O’GORMAN DISCUSSES HIS PARTICIPATION IN CURATORIAL EXCHANGE AS PART OF EXPO CHICAGO IN APRIL.

I WALKED OUTSIDE The Complex Gallery onto Arran Street East to take a call from Michele Horrigan, artist, curator, director and founder of Askeaton Contemporary Arts (ACA). Michele asked if I would like to join her and ACA at the Curatorial Exchange, organised by Independent Curators International (ICI) and the International Exposition of Contemporary & Modern Art (EXPO Chicago).

Michele and I had known each other nearly two years at that point. ACA commissions, produces, and exhibits contemporary art in the locale of Askeaton, a small town in County Limerick. I attended their annual event, Welcome to the Neighbourhood, in 2022 and Michele invited me back as a visiting curator the following year. During these visits, it became clear that Michele and I share common ground, with collaboration, hospitality, and a specific interest in place aligning our curatorial practices. She has been a constant source of support ever since. These visits to Askeaton helped me to contextualise my own ambitions within contemporary art. Most of my opportunities have come from instincts to form sincere relationships and spend time with people I relate to, without calculation.

Established in 2018, the Curatorial Exchange is an invitation-only programme, focused on funding global curator convenings that foster future collaborations on a local and international level. EXPO Chicago is an international contemporary and modern art exhibition held each year in Chicago. ICI is an international body, based in New York, that helps curators to create stronger art communities through global collaboration. Michele is part of the ICI alumni and was invited to take part in the Curatorial Forum, a parallel programme to the Curatorial Exchange. She expanded this opportunity by proposing that Helena Tobin, Director of South Tipperary Arts Centre, and I join her. It was the first time Irish curators took part in the programme which coincided with its 11th anniversary. The EXPO Chicago team organised an ambitious itinerary for participating curators, setting a high standard of care, communication, and professionalism. I embraced the experience and met with particular curators and art spaces that align with my practice and The Complex mission.

I arrived in Chicago four days before the Curatorial Exchange began, which gave me the chance to engage with the city, visit spaces, and carry out studio visits. I met artists like B. Ingrid Olson, Max Guy, Devin T. Mays, and Julian Van Der Moere, who spoke openly about their practices, particularly in the context of Chicago and its visual art infrastructure. I visited the Midland Warehouses, a vast industrial building that has been converted into artist studios and galleries. One such gallery was Good Weather, and I immediately felt a kinship

with their curatorial programme and community. There was a high level of professionalism within the presentation of the work, yet there was an informal atmosphere created by its non-traditional space and friendly dialogue. My experiences thereafter led me to see that the broader art scene in Chicago shares these traits. Around this time, Michele drove a seven-seater wagon across Wisconsin to visit art spaces, transporting the Irish team: Michele, Helena, and I, along with Sean Lynch, Emily Lynch, and Stephen Brandes, who was representing ACA in an off-site miniature fair, the Barely Fair.

During the Curatorial Exchange, participating curators met for breakfast each day before getting the bus to Expo Chicago on the city’s Navy Pier by Lake Michigan. This gave curators the chance to meet, share and speak openly about their work and challenges in the field. I connected with some inspiring people and developed friendships that impacted my experience. In partnership with ICI, EXPO Chicago presented its first ever free, public conference on-site, titled ‘Curating and the Commons’, which explored the civic nature and possibilities of art and curatorial practice.

Talks that resonated included a keynote lecture from Miguel A. López (Co-curator of the Toronto Biennial of Art 2024) who spoke about his time at TEOR/ética – an independent cultural project located in San José, Costa Rica. Through communal non-hierarchical ways of re-thinking its organisational structure, the staff decided on a new model of collective artistic direction. Risa Puleo (Co-curator of the Counterpublics Triennial 2023) mentioned the Wah Zha Zhe Puppet Theatre in Missouri, where oral stories are performed to maintain Osage identity. The concluding discussion featured Michele Horrigan, and Joseph Cuillier and Shani Peters from The Black School – an experimental art school teaching radical Black politics in New Orleans. The conversation was moderated by Megha Ralapati (Programme Director, CEC ArtsLink, New York) and weaved the diverse elements and distances between their programmes through local experiences.

It was an honour to represent The Complex and my curatorial practice internationally. Floating on an island between the hubs of contemporary art can make you feel somewhat detached as a curator. However, this perception soon fades away when you engage in genuine conversation and realise that we are all bound through our affinities.

Special thanks to The Arts Council of Ireland, the ICI team , the EXPO Chicago team, Michele Horrigan, Askeaton Contemporary Arts, and The Complex.

Mark O’Gorman is Curator/Producer of Visual Arts at The Complex, Dublin. thecomplex.ie

Irish Art History: Forgotten Figures Access

Hilary Heron: A Retrospective

SEÁN KISSANE DISCUSSES AN EXHIBITION AT IMMA THAT CELEBRATES THE LEGACY OF AN IRISH MODERNIST SCULPTOR.

CURRENTLY SHOWING AT IMMA, ‘Hilary Heron: A Retrospective’ celebrates the pioneering work of Dublin-born modernist sculptor, Hilary Heron (1923 – 1977). This is the first major exhibition of Heron’s work since 1964 and it brings together artworks from national and international collections. Part of the IMMA Modern Masters series, this retrospective seeks to correct the critical neglect of Heron’s work in the decades following her death.

It had been the intention of Riann Coulter and I to curate a retrospective of Heron more than ten years ago. However, her work had been so dispersed, and so little research had been done, that it seemed like an impossible task. This project became possible through the work undertaken by Billy Shortall, first with his master’s thesis, and secondly through research commissioned by IMMA to trace Heron’s extant works, draw together primary and secondary sources, and document the trajectory of her biography and artistic career.

The exhibition at IMMA is set out over several rooms, each articulating a different theme: Biography, Early Work, Venice Biennale, Flight, Primitivism, the Male Body, and the Female Body.1 The displays articulate the full breadth of Heron’s sculptural practice, including wood carving, stone carving, welding in different metals, lead reliefs, beaten metal reliefs, and encased stone assemblages, as well as her graphic practices of drawing and etching.2

Heron was never beholden to a single style or material, but she continually innovated and stretched the possibilities of her sculptural medium. Heron won many awards, including the Taylor Scholarship three years running. She was included in the Irish Exhibition of Living Art, found commercial representation with the Waddington Galleries, and was lauded in the press as Ireland’s foremost modern sculptor. Heron co-represented Ireland at the 1956 Venice Biennale alongside painter Louis le Brocquy (1916 – 2012). For this retrospective, we present a partial restaging of Heron’s Venice Biennale participation.3

In her essay for the accompanying monograph, Riann Coulter reads Heron’s

work through a feminist lens, finding in these sculptures a common thread of female unruliness and defiance. Coulter contrasts Heron’s portrayal in the media as a beautiful, elegant, feminine woman with another reality conveyed in her archive – that of a woman who worked with her hands at the hard labour of carving and welding, who used the money from a modelling contract to buy a motorbike and travel across Europe on her own, and who always struck out on an independent path.

The exhibition concludes with reflections on a woman who pursued an artistic medium traditionally associated with men and masculinity. Although she carved out a successful career in her lifetime, problems of historiography and how the art market values the work of women less than that of men, meant that her work largely fell into obscurity until now.

The Lower Ground Galleries contain ‘Redux: Contemporary Irish sculptors at Venice’, curated by Sara Damaris Muthi, featuring the work of Siobhán Hapaska, Eva Rothschild, and Niamh O’Malley –female sculptors who represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 2001, 2019, and 2022 respectively. ‘Redux’, meaning revival, signals Heron’s enduring legacy in proximity to contemporary sculptural practice.

Seán Kissane is Curator of Exhibitions at IMMA. ‘Hilary Heron: A Retrospective’ continues at IMMA until 28 October 2024, and will be presented at F.E. McWilliam Gallery and Studio from 15 November 2024 to 15 February 2025. imma.ie

1 At F.E. McWilliam Gallery, the architecture will necessitate a different layout, but the key thematics will be retained in the display.

2 The checklist of works at IMMA and F.E. McWilliam is different, with a slightly smaller number of works travelling to Banbridge. Sketchbooks, journals, and smaller objects, such as jewellery and other domestic items, form part of the biographical display.

3 We are grateful to Pierre le Brocquy who provided the Venice installation views from the le Brocquy archive, which facilitated the identification of works shown by Heron.

Buttercup: A Questioning Orientation

SARAH BROWNE OUTLINES ACCESS METHODS FOR HER NEW FILM INCLUDING CAPTIONING AND AUDIO DESCRIPTION.

BUTTERCUP (2024) IS a memoir and a formal experiment. The film is developed through the initial writing exercise of describing a photograph. This photograph, a family portrait, depicts a child wearing a communion dress, standing beside a man and a cow in a field (me, my father, and my pet cow). Returning to the farm where it was made, the familiar photograph is approached newly, repeatedly, by a narrator speaking in voiceover.

By ‘formal experiment’, I mean both the writerly task of creating a description that is not an ‘explanation’, and the exploration of how a film or an exhibition could make manifest the sensory and cognitive differences it points towards. I treated Buttercup as an experiment in developing a grammar of access within an artwork, where considerations of politics and aesthetics can’t be easily separated.

By ‘access’, I refer to Tania Titchkosky’s sense of “a complex form of perception that organizes socio-political relations between people in social space… a questioning orientation,”1 and Carolyn Lazard’s ideal of a “speculative practice.”2 The film was recently presented at SIRIUS as a two-channel installation, in which captions and audio-described versions played in alternation (the caption text was animated on a dedicated screen, which was inactive during the audio-described version).

Caption text includes both the subtitles for speech and descriptions of music and all other sounds in square brackets. For this exhibition, ‘open captions’ were used, because they’re always available for the collective viewing experience – unlike ‘closed captions’, where there is an individualised option to turn them on and off. Video designer Daniel Hughes and I devised a system to visually distinguish speech from other sounds and created a colour logic. The brightness of the screen is mapped to the intensity of the sound, so that the second channel creates something approaching a synaesthesic affect.

Primarily intended for blind and partially sighted receivers, Audio Description (AD) is an access accommodation delivered as audio, rather than being a description of audio. It is heard as ‘extra’ spoken information that describes images and action not apparent through a soundtrack alone. Both the voiceover and the AD in the film are performed by Elaine Lillian Joseph. Her voice behaves differently in these two different registers, with an unusually intimate treatment of the AD. The pacing of the film edit is shaped by the necessity of allowing ‘space’ in the audio track for both AD and the music, composed by David Donohoe. While an experimental approach to access was taken in Buttercup, this was also tested with a focus group of people who rely on AD and captioning to ensure the tools were functional. If access is consid-

ered early on in a production, it’s possible to collaborate closely with access workers and consultants in this way; quite like the rigours of working with a translator, this interpretative process can be hugely enriching for an artist.

Accessibility is a material practice, and it is a challenge for artists and institutions. There is a cost in terms of time (learning, planning, adjusting workflow) and resources (money, energy to change routine patterns). There’s also the uneasy and stubborn issue of taste, the idea that access could compromise the ‘ideal’ experience of the artwork.

Institutions can hesitate about making access measures available – what would this suggest in terms of future commitment and promise? It can be difficult to convince institutions that certain access measures are necessary, such as live captioning for public events, because some of the people who would benefit most already understand they are not typically made welcome: exclusion manifests very literally as absence; it justifies itself. Conceptions of accessibility (and disability) can be confronting because we are all likely to be disabled sometime, and that vulnerability may be uncomfortable to be reminded of; the narrator in Buttercup “backs away from the thought.”

It is disturbing to begin understanding just how many ways some disabled bodies are treated as “naturally lacking access and, therefore, excludable”3 in publicly funded spaces, such as universities and galleries. Often, many people who don’t think of themselves as needing individualised access supports are surprised by how they benefit from their open availability. Playing the two versions of Buttercup in alternation at SIRIUS showed the possibilities and contrasts in two of many possible translations, resisting any singular ‘best’, ‘complete’ or ‘natural’ way of experiencing the work. Socialising these differences openly in the gallery with others is a way of questioning how spaces are normatively organised, and asking how they could be otherwise.

Funded by Arts and Disability Connect, Buttercup was commissioned by SIRIUS, where it was exhibited from 13 April to 29 June, curated by Miguel Amado. An accompanying text by Sarah Hayden is available online as an audio recording and PDF. The print edition, designed by Rose Nordin, is published by Kunstverein Aughrim. sarahbrowne.info

1 Tania Titchkosky, The Question of Access: Disability, Space, Meaning (University of Toronto Press, 2011) pp. 9-10.

2 Carolyn Lazard, Accessibility in the Arts, a Promise and a Practice, 2019 (promiseandpractice.art)

3 Titchkosky, p.6.

Hilary Heron with Irish Elk, 1952; image courtesy of IMMA and the Estate of Hilary Heron.

Apocalypse Anxieties

MICHAËLE CUTAYA CONSIDERS THE CURRENT GROUP EXHIBITION AT LUAN GALLERY.

FOR ‘APOCALYPSE ANXIETIES’, curator and artist Kerry Guinan takes a Cold War-era rumour about a ‘nuclear bunker’ under Custume Barracks in Athlone as a catalyst for an exhibition across the road in the Luan Gallery (27 April – 27 June 2024). That it was not really a nuclear bunker – its official name was ‘Integrated National Control Centre’ – matters little, as what intrigues Guinan is how the threat of nuclear Armageddon manifested in government preparations. Most famous perhaps was the pamphlet, Bás Beatha, published by Civil Defence Ireland in 1965, advising citizens on how to prepare for the radioactive fall-out that would follow a nuclear strike.

If these quaintly inadequate government guidelines have inspired artists before – Dennis McNulty and Ros Kavanagh’s installation, How will I know when to go indoors? for TULCA Festival in 2015, comes to mind – here, its pages, along with the selected artworks, are more intent on questioning the accommodation of the threat of apocalypse in everyday life. How can this concept co-exist with our other more mundane preoccupations? As a case in point, in the introductory essay to the exhibition, Guinan mentions that the Department of Defence had plans for a purpose-built shelter, but that they were then distracted by other emergencies, such as The Troubles, and never carried them out.

Survivalists take existential threats and make them the very core of their everyday life. For Beyond Survival (2022), Léann Herlihy re-enacts survivalist reality shows. The film alternates confessions straight to the camera with roaming shots; the camera cheekily attached between the legs of the protagonist gives us a crotch perspective of their movements. Herlihy has good fun playing with testosterone-driven would-be-survivor tropes, but also teases out the question of queer survivalism and how it might reconfigure

Léann Herlihy, Beyond Survival 2022, film, installation of artefacts; photograph by Ellen-Rose Wallace, courtesy of the artist and Luan Gallery.

the genre.

Aideen Barry’s print, Balor’s Eye (2020), is inspired by the myth of Balor whose third eye, when opened, was said to poison the land he looked at. If the mythological realm may seem a far cry from everyday life, it is in fact intimately connected to the rooted experience of the artist and her family inhabiting a land poisoned by the arsenic used in mining for lead, zinc, copper and silver in County Tipperary, making it unsafe to grow food or even sustain animal life.

This is my third encounter with Christopher Steenson’s Soft Rains Will Come (2023) and it has been a different experience each time. In the present context, the vintage radios necessarily connect with Bás Beatha’s recommendation to keep a radio set nearby, in order to hear the national alert that nuclear war has broken out. They also echo the proximity of Custume Barracks to Radio Éireann’s most powerful transmitter in the 1960s; the station has since been decommissioned but the transmission equipment remains in situ. Sitting there, listening to the layered soundscape of past environmental recordings, live broadcast of local radios, and announcement of a prophetic future, is a good approx-

imation of what it is like, attempting to accommodate different temporal projections at once.

Tom O’Dea and Frank Sweeney’s Any Action Deemed Necessary (2024) is a specially commissioned installation. In the darkened space of the New Gallery is a large official desk with two groups of objects arranged at both ends, mirroring each other. But where there is a green lamp on the right, there is a cardboard lamp on the left, and the large glass ashtray on the left is likewise balanced by cardboard on the other side. Two alternative narratives play out on the black telephones when they ring. If the work references and questions Cold War alignments, one can’t help also thinking of the difficulty in telling what is fake news and what is real in our media saturated world.

Orla Punch’s print title is a mini essay in itself: The Space Between Aspiration and Achievement: An Architectural Exploration Through an Extreme Environment (2010). The architectural sketch proposes a sustainable model of development for the planet Mars, if it is to be the ‘Planet B’ proposed by some.

In a comment about curating the exhibition, Guinan mentions its therapeutic effect, and there is a sense of

healing when we lay our hand – as we are invited to do – on the rock resting on a plinth. Touching the piece of limestone immediately conveys how deceptively simple Tangible Earth (2024) looks: we jump in surprise at its warmth and pulse. We can only intuit the rather complex technology that produces this sensation, but it has an unexpected soothing effect and an invitation to connect to the earth’s rhythm.

The comparison with nuclear threat during the Cold War raises interesting questions about preparation, communication, and survival, while also highlighting obvious parallels with the contemporary existential threat of the climate crisis, with preparations viewed as inadequate now as they were then. Since no nuclear strike has taken place thus far, what was done might be seen as a waste of time, as I’m sure millions voting for the far-right across Europe happily believe.

Aideen Barry, Oblivion, 2020, large scale matt vinyl wall print; Christopher Steenson, Soft Rains Will Come 2023, installation view; photograph by Ellen-Rose Wallace, courtesy of the artists and Luan Gallery.

Michaële Cutaya is a writer on art living in County Galway.

Hereditas

SÉAMUS NOLAN OUTLINES A COLLABORATIVE ART PROJECT EXPLORING TRAVELLER CULTURE AND SOCIAL HISTORY FOR CAIRDE SLIGO ARTS FESTIVAL.

‘HEREDITAS’ IS A collaborative art project I am facilitating with the Sligo Traveller Support Group (STSG), which is supported by The Arts Council’s ART: 2023 centenary programme and Cairde Sligo Arts Festival (6 – 13 July). Initiated in January 2023, with a projected duration of 18 months, the project set out to explore how the Irish State has impacted on the culture and social history of Travelling people in Sligo through community participation and collaborative practice. The Latin word, hereditas, signals a form of inheritance or a legacy of the past that exists in the present. It also forms a common linguistic bridge to both Irish, and the Mincéirí / Irish Traveller language, Gammon-Cant.

The core aim was to identify and support Traveller-led research and initiatives in the broader community that might be resourced and developed in the locality through the Cairde festival programme. Specific projects were devised to bring artists and the Travelling community in Sligo together in collaborative, creative, and public-facing outcomes. The project strands include: ‘Standing Ground’, a community mapping project; ‘The Wandering Gaze’, an exhibition, curated by Dr Julie Brazil, of paintings, drawings and prints by Jack B. Yeats in partnership with The Model (6 July – 28 September 2024) alongside ‘Bafushia’, a concurrent exhibition of seven artists (Chloe McDonagh, Dave McDonagh, Francesca Hutchinson, Leanne McDonagh, Phien O’Phien, Tommy Rhattigan, and William Cauley) who share Traveller heritage; and Libraries & Liberties (2024), a commissioned play by Rosaleen McDonagh.

The works of Jack B. Yeats serve as a record which documents Traveller bodies in the landscape. Yeats’s paintings are regarded as being grounded in the marginal, depicting the characters and cultures that existed upon the periphery of Irish society. The artworks offer a point of departure where participants might speak to those images, the themes and subjects they raise, to contest their relevance and offer their own interpretations based on Traveller experience, rather than the artist’s perceptions and experience of Travellers. The objective of critical reflection through creative engagement was central to the aims of the project, while the goals, expectations, and community knowledge of STSG and the participants, demonstrates how carefully supporting the participants to speak about personal and community history was essential to contesting narratives overlaid upon the community from without.

Gathering together Yeats’s works from diverse collections, both public and private, archival and art historic, alongside the oral accounts and memories of the community, involves exploring the processes and practices of community history, cultural and collective memory. In the discussions that have taken place in a series of workshops,

held between March and July with participants from the Travelling community in Sligo, much of the group discussion in response to Yeats’s work are centred upon identity, how Travellers are identified in certain landscapes – through dress or in the activities relative to nomadism – what it was that drew Yeats to document their culture, and how he distinguished between the Travelling community and the broader migrant communities so prevalent in early twentieth-century Ireland. The images Yeats created offer a glimpse into the everyday lives of ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary’ people simultaneously. Travellers were identified in relation to nomadic practices that have now been criminalised or are no longer possible, raising issues of forced assimilation, transition, and displacement – towards historic locations but also displacement towards the cultural practices that those locations facilitated – legacies which have framed much of the community’s history and collective memory.

Societies and social groups share information and knowledge in many ways, through material objects such as books, paintings, tapestries, or monuments of all kinds, but also through immaterial activities such as storytelling, song, and performance. Writer and Traveller Culture Collections Development Officer in the National Museum of Ireland, Oein DeBhairduin, working as consultant for ‘The Wandering Gaze’, described how the Traveller word for talking or chatting is widen. However,

widen describes not simply the activity of speaking but the situation of sitting together around a fire – the place where talking in its most collective form occurs. With those participating in group conversation being equally distant from the fire, an equality is implied in the action, in the setting, and in the word itself.

Another word, bafushia – found written in the margins of one of Yeats’s notebooks – was explored with the group as a possible descriptor for the subject of his drawing, Telling the Cards (1898). In Traveller Gammon-Cant, bafushia might refer to a process of forward movement, but in the context of this image, it could also be used to describe a divining of the future: ‘telling forward’, seeking out, or imagining what lies ahead. Archivists and scholars such as Eric Ketelaar describe the environment as a ‘memory text’ that contains information and knowledge that can be read in the broadest possible understanding of literacy, as a process of interpretation. Reading the tea leaves, reading a road map, reading an audience, a landscape, or a social setting are all ways of interpreting information through objects, situations, and environments. In this way, the landscape holds memory and knowledge unique to the social groupings that inhabit those environments. Oral cultures or communities, in this sense, are not simply engaged in mnemonic relationships with language but are inherently engaged in a reflexive discourse with the total situation of the environment and its landscape – be

it the geographical landscape, the cultural landscape, or the landscape that Yeats conjures through his own visual vocabulary. In this sense, the cultural memory of communities who have documented their histories through oral traditions, in communicative encounters between the objects, locations, and language define an immateriality that is practiced, transferred, and interpreted amongst groups and in dialogue with the immediate environment. Communicative memory is performative and in creative dialogue with its ‘total environment’. It is not fixed, as to do so is to remove the agency of the individual or community to interpret and define their own history, their own story, and the process of its telling.

Séamus Nolan is a PhD candidate with NCAD, UCD, and IMMA, supported by the Irish Research Council.

Curated by Dr Julie Brazil, ‘The Wandering Gaze’ will run from 6 July to 28 September at The Model, in partnership with Cairde Sligo Arts Festival as part of the Hereditas Cultural Project, funded by The Arts Council’s ART: 2023 centenary programme. cairdefestival.com

The ancillary exhibition, ‘Bafushia’, will run from 6 July to 28 September at The Model. themodel.ie

Jack B. Yeats, In Capel Street, Dublin, 1923, Crawford Art Gallery Collection; image © Estate of Jack B. Yeats, All rights reserved, DACS London / IVARO Dublin, 2024.

In Focus : CGI / Digital Art

Digital Changelings

1iing heaney

VAI Member

CGI IS CENTRAL to my practice; it’s the tool from which everything else stems. Using 3D animation and 3D scanning with video, print and sculpture, my work explores virtual space as an extension of the geological world. I’m interested in how the geologic mineral components that make up digital technologies (cobalt, lithium, quartz, and so on), which formed slowly over millions of years, can be remixed to create a container for an accelerated reality. Thinking in this tectonic way has led me to consider the future of nature, folklore and the wilderness within virtual spaces, as a reflection and evolution of their terrestrial origins.

I graduated from NCAD in 2015 with a BA in Fine Art Media. During my time there, I tried my hand at whatever technology I could access – electronics, motion sensors, game engines, coding, 3D animation. For my final year project, I made interactive artworks on tablets in which people could influence natural rhythms, such as the tides and diurnal cycles, by swiping the screen. That provisional idea of exploring nature through digital technologies continues to weave its way through my practice nearly ten years later.

I’m currently Artist-in-Residence at the Courthouse Arts Centre in Tinahely, County Wicklow. I’ve been associated with the centre since 2020, and they are so supportive of my work. While here, I’ve been working with the protected ancient oak forest of Tomnafinnoge Woods, ten minutes away from the Courthouse. These Woods are a protected example of a biodiverse native Irish woodland. Because of its conservation status, I was interested in exploring the woods virtually, and this is what led me to experimenting with 3D scanning, photogrammetry, and 3D printing.

I’m interested in photogrammetry and 3D scanning as a means of digital preservation. During a conversation I had in 2022 with Clodagh Doyle, Keeper in the Irish Folklore Division of the National Museum of Ireland, she described 3D scanned objects as changelings – objects that sit in a liminal digital space, removed from their context, and conserving a brief moment in time. They replace the original and offer their virtual shell as a record.

Both 3D scanning and photogrammetry can produce digital reproductions of physical objects, but are two different types of processes. Photogrammetry is more accessible as it uses software to stitch together hundreds of overlapping photographs to construct 3D models; whereas 3D scanning directly captures the geometry using laser sensors, yielding more accurate replicas.

In 2022, I worked with 3D Scanning Ireland to create digital replicas of trees, leaves, and other organic objects in Tomnafinnoge

Woods. I used these 3D models to make a CGI film, sapling (2023), that was fragmented across multiple screens. Following this, I began to make my own 3D scans in Tomnafinnoge using photogrammetry. This work started as an experiment in making digital art in time with seasonal change, to capture the moment of transformation of seeds, fruit, and the turning of leaves.

As photogrammetry can be less accurate than 3D scanning, eerie changeling replicas emerged in which faceted ‘artifacting’ from digitisation replaced tiny organic imperfections. I further combined these scans with digital sculpting, and when 3D printed, these once organic objects morphed into new physical spectres, like an uncanny nature table. These new 3D printed sculptures were exhibited in my solo exhibition at Mermaid Arts Centre, ‘World Without End’ (15 December 2023 – 24 February 2024). I’m continuing my work with photogrammetry and 3D printing and am looking to create more immersive and interactive pieces, drawing on the uncanny aspects of digital preservation.

1iing heaney is a visual artist from Bray currently based in North Dublin. 1iing.com

with

sculpted

ABS-like SLA resin, epoxy resin, mica powder, germinating acorn, water, bespoke plinth made with MDF, pine and neon acrylic paint, Mermaid Arts Centre; photographs by Louis Haugh, courtesy of the artist.

Creative Technology

Cailean Finn VAI Member

I AM A media artist and creative technologist from Waterford. My practice is centred around investigating computational design and processes embedded within socio-technological systems – ranging from artificial intelligence, to creative coding and computer graphics.

As an emerging artist, I was profoundly influenced by the pioneering work of Steina and Woody Vasulka. Their explorations of early video and digital media inspired me to investigate the underlying computational processes of various technologies. In 2022, I collaborated with various artists working at the intersection of art and technology. These experiences introduced me to a diverse set of practices that adopt a more critical perspective towards technology. I became increasingly interested in socio-technological systems, that I have since explored by studying the human-machine relationship, computational histories, and the culture surrounding them. This pushed me to explore not only the technical aspects of technology, but also its hidden processes, and at times, the idiosyncratic nature of our relationship with technology.

By leveraging technology, I aim to reimagine and explore speculative realities, offering new perspectives on our interconnected world. As I move in-between technologies, this approach has now become a core aspect of my artistic practice. One may argue it is akin to the mindset of a hacker: dismantling technologies to understand how they function at a computational level, while mapping their limitations and underlying structures.

My current work and research focus on exploring the emergent behaviours of virtual life through Evolutionary Computation and Reinforcement Learning. It is particularly interesting to speculate on the impact of embodied intelligence on various ecologies as they slowly become more ubiquitous. Through wanting to learn more about this field, and from being inspired by the works of Ian Cheng and John Gerrard, I have begun to experiment with ‘simulations’ as a medium for investigations.

Over the past few months, I have been working on two projects which explore embodied intelligence: ‘Beauty and The Beep’, in collaboration with a Swiss designer and researcher Simone C Niquille; and ‘Moloch’, an independent work for the Digital Art in Ireland symposium and exhibition, held at UCC and the Lord Mayor’s Pavilion, Cork, in June 2024. In the development of these works, I used Unity3D – a realtime 3D game engine – along with selected Machine Learning frameworks to experiment with virtual life inside virtual environments.

The tools and techniques that I rely on as part of my practice vary from project to project. However, creative coding and programming are key skills that I use regularly, enabling me to work with a wide set of tools and technologies. The fundamentals of each language generally follow the same principles, so regardless of what software one is using, it is not too difficult to learn a new programming language.

My foundation in coding gives me the flexibility to explore frameworks like Unity (C#), p5js (JavaScript), and OpenFrameworks (C++). The ability to shift between different languages and frameworks has been crucial to the development of my practice. Personally, creative coding extends beyond just building tools and experiences; it embodies a philosophy that encourages a more holistic and critical perspective of technology in a way that is experimental and playful!

Cailean Finn is a Media Artist and Creative Technologist from Waterford. caileanfinn.ie

Both Images: Cailean Finn, Moloch, 2024, simulation; images courtesy of the artist.

Cyborg Ecologies

Jonah King VAI Member

FOR OVER A decade, I have delved into the intersection of science, technology, and our evolving relationship with nature. As a digital media artist and filmmaker, my work encompasses writing, performance, and education. These diverse approaches allow me to challenge and reconsider the anthropocentric views that often dominate ecological discussions.

Traditionally, my creative process involved collaboration with actors and non-actors, drawing on methods from filmmaking and theatre that were collectively devised. However, the constraints imposed by the Covid-19 lockdown forced a shift in my practice. Unable to engage in physical collaborations, I turned to 3D software to simulate my production model. This transition led me to explore artificial intelligence, virtual reality, motion capture, and digital avatars – emerging technologies that offered new dimensions for my work.

At the time, I was very inspired by Donna Haraway’s 1985 essay, A Cyborg Manifesto, which argues for a rejection of boundaries between human, animal, and machine. I was drawn to these new artistic tools as a method of reflecting an extended ecological body in the digital realm in a way that mirrors Haraway’s ideas and my own explorations throughout my practice to date.

This thinking led to a major VR project called Honey Fungus (2021-ongoing) – an eco-erotic, sci-fi, VR experience derived from an AI-generated amalgamation of Smithsonian field research and amateur erotica. The project includes a narrative led by a queer sentient ecological being, manifested as an omnipresent mycelial entity, guiding the audience through an entangled ecology to uncover the orgasmic potential of soil and weather systems.

I incorporated ideas around body transfer experiences in virtual reality, which I encountered through research taking place in Barcelona University’s psychology department, that demonstrated how quickly subjects adapt to the augmentation of their body’s form. I used Unreal Engine game development software to build immersive environments and invited collaborators to contribute text and audio. I developed a process to mimic mycelium growth in 3D – a digital hand-drawing technique using a pen-tablet and the open-source 3D software, Blender. I have been 3D printing these drawings and incorporating them into a new body of sculpture.

The first iteration of Honey Fungus was presented at VISUAL Carlow’s ‘Speech Sounds’ exhibition in 2022. I am now completing the final version, which includes four chapters inspired by the fungal reproduction cycle. In this immersive journey, viewers descend the stem of a mushroom into the mycelium networks, interact with spores that communicate with them, expand fungal hyphae through bodily movements, and finally, are launched into the sky, where they disperse spores and seed rain.

Developing Honey Fungus has revealed that immersive technology offers a distinct experience from traditional video. In VR, time feels different, and attention

spans are shorter. Unlike traditional video, where framing and editing direct the viewer’s focus, VR demands subtle guidance through sound, colour, and movement. This approach draws more from practical magic than cinema, emphasising interaction over mere immersion.

Transitioning from filmmaking to VR has deepened my engagement with the audience, providing a profoundly embodied experience of the concepts I have explored throughout my career. Remarkably, 57% of our cellular mass is not human. We exist within a complex web of macrobiotic interconnection. I hope Honey Fungus encourages viewers to reconsider where one body ends and another begins and, through virtual reality, embrace the idea of a ‘second body’ that connects us all.

Jonah King is an interdisciplinary artist and educator working between Dublin and Brooklyn. jonahking.com

Top: Jonah King, Three Graces 2024, ceramic, resin, and mirror; Bottom: Hesse Flatow Gallery Booth (with Kirsten Deirup), installation view, EXPO Chicago 2024; photographs by Mikhail Mishin, courtesy of the artist.

Wanderings in the Digital Soup

Gerard Carson Digital Artist

DIGITAL PROCESSES HAVE been an aspect of my practice as far back as I can remember. I suppose it’s a feature of being of an artistic generation that saw the rise of the personal computing market, advanced image editing software, digital 3D design, and the accessibility of open-source, free-of-use design programs. It’s a world in which everything is accessible at all times, seemingly subsumed into a generalised soup where the virtual and actual are dissolved into an undifferentiated mass. Everything is right up against one another. Not so much surfing the net, but rather being dunked into a very noisy cavernous room. My early use of digital media primarily took the form of videos and digital collages, comprised of archival footage and photographs sourced online and from digital scans, wandering through a plethora of media.

This process has shifted and morphed over time with an expanded use of materials and processes, where the digital and sculptural become embedded within one another. It’s a process that I have explored by making use of open-source software, such as Blender. I’m mostly self-taught in my use of this software from viewing online tutorials and videos, the learning curve being rather steep and having to wrap my head around some rather complex geometric principles. It’s interesting how you have to adapt your mindset from understanding objects existing in actual physical space to a digital environment. The process of building a digital “sculpture” lacks the literal tactility of working with physical material, however I have a very strong sense of these constructions as physical objects. The objects in the assemblage are bolted, tied, knotted, balanced, bent, carved. I often regard the work I produce through these mediums as synonymous with one another, the sculptural object drifts between physical and digital distinctions, becoming extensions of one another. Of course, the possibilities of working in this process are seemingly endless, yet I think that as a rule it’s beneficial to set limits as to how I use this software, considering form, composition and aesthetic considerations.

A more recent development is the use of AI image generating software, which I use as a form of collage, blending images that reference archaeology, engineering, architecture, product design, amongst other fields of documentary photography. The images generated through this process are used a type of preparatory sketch, from which I generate my own objects and images that become part of the wider assemblage. It’s a method of following the process, where the object and wider assemblage gradually takes form. It’s like a kind of archaeological salvaging from a vast trove of material, searching for objects, rather than signs, seeing which pieces can be combined to form new constructions that appear as rigs and mobile platforms that are composites of multiple parts that have surpassed their original utility.

There’s an element of feedback that flows throughout these works that in turn generates further work in different media, yet always pointing towards an occulted materiality that exist within a precarious environment and eludes concrete definitions. There’s always something immediately adjacent to it creeping about around the corner. I feel that it is this aspect that the digital really opens up, an expanded sense of how we encounter and interact with images, objects and materials, their origins and existence within the digital soup.

Gerard Carson is an artist based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, working primarily in sculpture and digital media.

Gerard Carson Top: Glean 2024, digitally rendered sculptural assemblage; Bottom Left: Circuit, 2022, mixed media sculpture; Bottom Right: Trove, 2024, mixed media sculpture; all images courtesy of the artist.

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

Critique

Edition 74: July – August 2024

Helen Hughes, ‘finding the most forgiving element’, installation view, Butler Gallery; photograph by Ros Kavanagh, courtesy of the artist and Butler Gallery.

Critique

Pauline Rowan, ‘Under a Vaulted Sky’ Caline Aoun, ‘When the Invisible Touches the Surface’ The Dock 11 May – 6 July 2024

TWO EXHIBITIONS, HOSTED simultaneously at The Dock, offer different experiences – one emotive, the other tactile – based on explorations of environments and nature itself. Caline Aoun considers states of transformation, and the accumulation or dissipation of energy, while Pauline Rowan focuses her lens on a small community, set in a deconsecrated convent and its partially derelict grounds – slated for demolition at the time of the artist’s research and eventually turned into apartments.

Initiated in 2018, Rowan’s ongoing photographic series, ‘Under a Vaulted Sky’, documents a community in transition, caught between the retreat of a fading theocratic order and a razed future, heralded by a property developer’s bulldozers. Even as change is imminent, it is a place haunted by its complex past, as conveyed by Lift Me (2018), which features a young woman crouched at the base of a statue of the Virgin Mary, caressing its hand. Given the Catholic Church’s historical grip on women’s lives in Ireland, the image induces ambivalence at first. Yet foliage encroaches the ivydraped statue, suggesting a state of neglect after the Church’s abandonment. While the Trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost has retreated as an ideological force, the gesture of an outstretched hand suggests a nascent spirituality has emerged

in the wake of that departure.

Elsewhere, recuperated religious and botanical imagery abound. A woman tends a grotto cleared of statuary. Two women, one veiled, face away from the viewer, framed by foliage. Overripe apples, roses, and trees shot alone at night also recur, lending rich symbolism. Here is a mysterious, even preternatural realm, wholly separate from the larger, profane world; a walled garden, lushly overgrown and inhabited by women, as imparted by tender portraits of women in states of repose or contemplation. Rowan’s mother is posed sitting in a throne-like chair on the altar in an otherwise empty room, wearing a crown of purple hydrangea blossoms. Regal, she radiates the wisdom of her age in a place of traditionally patriarchal power, in contrast with the archival photograph of a young girl, herself as a child, in a communion dress. In this light, the apples refer to a return to paradise, to knowledge lost and recovered.

“A garden is a time capsule,” writes Olivia Laing, “as well as a portal out of time.” The garden is a powerful metaphor for the history of women’s lives in Ireland: once a controlled and enclosed space, it has become wild and even strange, containing new possibilities, even as it is threatened from outside. The fragile ecosystem of the convent is nevertheless a site of mutual sup-

port and interconnectedness, where bonds are centred around care and contemplation.

In contrast, Lebanese artist Caline Aoun’s exhibition, ‘When the Invisible Touches the Surface’, draws a tactile response, by representing dynamic environmental exchange. Arranged in the large, bright, airy space of Gallery Two, the presentation is minimalist and even clinical in design and execution. Measuring Entropy consists of two large, framed works that at first glance appear to be paintings; they are sheets of paper, containing the marks of fallen pine needles, captured on silicone from surrounding trees in her studio in the mountains of Beirut. In Relying on the Sun, copper sheets cover the panes of one of the gallery’s large sash windows; the boundaries between inside and outside are dissolved as the copper transforms the panes into conductors of heat from sunlight. The fingerprints of previous visitors are visible across this metallic surface.

Dreaming of Artificial Dew (2024) also plays on the visuality of minimalism. Accompanied by the humming of unseen fridge compressors, three pale, rectangular, monochrome paintings hang on the wall. Viewed up close, their aluminium surfaces glisten with condensation and ice crystals, which gather and drip, occasionally cascading onto the floorboards below, as

they interact with and adjust to the room’s temperature. Other mechanisms (including a fan, thermostat, and pipes) are partially concealed to the rear of a custom-built partition wall, which viewers encounter first, upon entering the space. Radiant Data is a copper-clad iPad emitting a subtle heat as live data is streamed. Data is usually thought of as discrete and virtual, but here, the invisible is rendered tangible, prompting reflection on how unseen forces subtly but persistently shape our environments.

Examining our relationship to nature in complementary ways, these two exhibitions use self-contained environments (the garden, the exhibition space as laboratory) to explore the invisible and, in turn, processes of change. Elements in these environments – heat and cold, maps and apples – are active components, intricately connected within a larger system, serving as interfaces between bodies and invisible forces, whether energic or otherworldly. The alchemy of time transforms matter – seasons compel growth, water crystalises on cold surfaces, temperature lifts and drops, a garden decays – shifts that are registered by the body and felt.

Phillina Sun is an American writer based in the Northwest of Ireland. @phillina.sun

Pauline Rowan, ‘Under a Vaulted Sky’, 2024, installation view, The Dock, May 2024; photograph by Ros Kavanagh courtesy of the artist and The Dock.

Caline Aoun, Dreaming of Artificial Dew 2024, detail view; photograph by Ros Kavanagh courtesy of the artist and The Dock.

Critique

Helen Hughes, ‘finding the most forgiving element’

Butler Gallery

6 April – 26 May 2024

IN HELEN HUGHES’S solo exhibition, ‘finding the most forgiving element’, the gallery is filled with sculptures that exude a candy-like impression; smooth, shiny, and sumptuous. Colours pop and materials gloop, droop, and flirt. In one corner, a waist-high sphere resembling a lollipop reveals itself to be a giant balloon covered with translucent orange plastic. Aptly titled Establishing One’s Presence, Objectively (2024) it calls forth the strong desire to touch that pervades the exhibition, explaining the sensory wall just outside the gallery. This wall offers visitors the opportunity to stroke, pinch, and tap the various materials present, providing a generous outlet for those to whom the tactile temptations of the work might otherwise prove overwhelming.

In the gallery, a screen resting against the far wall acts as Rosetta Stone, with the video, SA_FILM_GREEN_REV_ (2024), playfully opening up how the artist wants us to read and understand her work. Shades of pale green and pastel pink dominate through slick transitions and animated movements. Close-ups of silicone expand the medium into porous skin. We see an object inflate, accompanied by the sound of birdsong as the first breath of the morning, and as it deflates, the imagery and sound descend into fuzz. Plastic clouds suck and pack down into asymmetrical shapes, assemblages and structures. The lens carefully moves over the sculptures, creating a kaleidoscopic impression. The soundtrack emanates throughout, not only keeping rhythm with the video, but accompanying the sculptures placed in the gallery – radio static, dispersed with chimes and bells, inhaling sounds, and snippets of soul music.

The sculptures holding form in the gallery are odes to the commodity, the production and marketisation of desire, mass industry and the “fetishistic surfaces of retail.” In all of Hughes’s pieces there is a strong relationship to the body as one imagines how these shapes were physically stretched, draped and poured. She expands her sculptural output to include a flirtatiousness that playfully opens up the desire to touch. The colours and textures speak to the seduction and romance occurring between the artist and her forms, while the shiny, synthetic surfaces bring the viewer back to the material.

In the display, A Hierarchy of Human Beings (2024), five glass-like balloon forms are stacked inside a Perspex plinth. They are light, in both senses of the word, exuding a transparent tenderness; cavities balancing on top of one another. In another arrangement, We Are Now Absorbed in Something (2024), pink goo has been poured onto another sphere, preserving the remains of an action perfectly executed.

Wall hangings akin to breast plates adorn the space, rubber and pigment cast into rough rectangles with very defined contours and protrusions. Colours bleed into each other, making topographic lines upon the surface. One of the objects is draped over a plinth, the material’s form and colour a striking reference to skin. Titled The Wonder That a Thing Exists (2023), it elegantly connects matter to form; the artist’s touch

to the artist’s hand.

Getting Outside Her Own Head (2024), is blue plastic, sticky in its viscosity, poured over a plinth, with irregular multicoloured polka dots stuck on top. Demonstrating a panache for titling that is often as playful as the works themselves, it is reminiscent of a headless cloaked person, and the smooth contours and folds appear fixed in motion.

The exploration of texture throughout adds to the depth of this visio-tactile exploration. From the matte hues Hughes uses, to her glossy finishes, this is an aesthetic that serves to draw the viewer into a deeper engagement with the materiality of the works. The interplay between light and shadow, especially in the translucent and reflective surfaces, creates a dynamic visual experience that shifts as one moves through the gallery. This effect is heightened by the careful placement of the pieces, allowing each sculpture to interact with its surroundings and the viewer in unique ways. In the previous century, artists cast a lens on modes of mass production by using them to create art. Hughes tightens the critique, subsuming the aesthetic of the consumable into the production of laborious one-offs.

In ‘finding the most forgiving element’, Hughes employs the materials in her oeuvre to manipulate and awaken desire in her viewer, skilfully weaving together fragile and firm, organised chaos to create a playful material display while also critiquing material culture.

Ella de Búrca is an Irish visual artist and lecturer at SETU Wexford College of Art.

elladeburca.com

Top: Helen Hughes, the second kind of commitment 2024; Bottom: Helen Hughes, to crinkle the light bouncing off 2024; photographs by Ros Kavanagh, courtesy of the artist and Butler Gallery

Martin Healy, ‘A Moment Twice Lived’

Crawford Art Gallery

2 May – 30 June 2024

MARTIN HEALY’S FILM, A Moment Twice Lived (2016), is being shown in Crawford Art Gallery’s screening room as part of a programme to present moving image works from the gallery collection. Healy’s film has a further Crawford connection in that the gallery’s elegant wood panelled library provides the location for its opening scenes. It is a room from another era, where time feels suspended, especially in contrast to the modern bustle of Cork city centre, which it overlooks. This makes it the perfect setting for Healy to begin his delicate and haunting exploration of subjective understandings of time, as experienced through ageing, memory, and dreaming.

Running throughout A Moment Twice Lived is a voiceover, based on extracts from J.W. Dunne’s 1927 book, An Experiment with Time, narrating the inner musings of the lead character, an older woman, played by Anne Marie Kelly in a compellingly sensitive performance. Starting with a ‘dodge’ to remember fading dreams, the voiceover suggests bringing to mind a single incident and focusing on it, rather than trying to recall its context, and then collecting these remembered incidents.

From there, the narration leads the listener to a concept of time as circular, a condition in which past, present and future are all equally present and recurring in an instant, as the ‘curtain of time’ is lifted. Everything has already happened and will happen again. Along the way, the narrator describes how she first came to link these dream images with time, the powerful sense of déjà-vu that accompanied her first childhood experience of one of these incidents, and her urge to tell everyone that everything will be alright because it has already happened – though this is also mingled with a sense of helplessness that nothing can be changed.

This heady trajectory is carefully

in terms that clearly link it to the relationship of a spectator to an image. The dream incident is described as a faded and indistinct image that can become vivid and spontaneously appear in the mind like a photograph developed from a memory. These images are described as bright but without depth. Later, the past is pictured cinematically as an opaque and rolling band with slow pulsating rhythms between lightness and darkness, always in the same dimensions, “like a film perfectly staged for the perfect spot in the cinema.”

Time unfolds as an act staged in a cinema, with each performance the same as the one before. Her final musing evokes one of cinema’s unique qualities: to make time stop. This experience is described as simultaneously detached and powerfully physical, as her “whole body and head were open and full of light” while “not in my own body, as

if above it, spinning round and round outside myself and yet not moving.”

Healy creates painterly and graceful images to interact with this remarkable text, which intelligently avoid the temptation to replicate these cinematic descriptions of the narrator’s experience. Instead, he focuses on the lead character’s reactions to the sensations described, as she slips between three scenes. These start in the Crawford library, where the physical touch of old wood moves to the contemplation of a painting depicting a shadowy figure in front of a fire. Her focus is on an image that itself suggests both contemplation and reaction, in which the dark figure gazes into the bright flames but also raises his arms as a physical response to them.

The film then moves to a spacious storeroom that feels like a film set or empty stage, full of film lights and discarded wooden

boxes. The character, eyes closed, faces a blank wall while completely wrapped up in her inner experience of time. She is joined by a row of similarly aged people, all equally trained on their experiences. Healy has set a scene in which the pure potential of memory can play out – a place without images but suggestive of an apparatus for creating them. What is moving about this scene are the reactions and gestures of the characters, trembling at the intensity of their inner experiences. Rather than attempt to create an image of time, Healy allows it to remain tantalisingly elsewhere – a realm left for viewers to explore for themselves.

Maximilian Le Cain is a filmmaker and critic based in Cork City. maximilianlecain.com

Both Images: Martin Healy, A Moment Twice Lived, 2016; image courtesy of the artist and Crawford Art Gallery. described

Critique

Martina O’Brien ‘draft fissure’

Galway Arts Centre

12 April – 25 May 2024

THE PROTAGONIST IN Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea (Chatto & Windus, 1978) says that “time, like the sea, unties all knots.” Captured, legislated, yet unfathomable, the sea appears as both documented and ungraspable in Martina O’Brien’s recent exhibition, ‘draft fissure’, at Galway Arts Centre. Across ten works, in a range of media, developed through a UCD Parity Studios residency with iCRAG (Ireland Research Centre in Applied Geosciences), the artist brings together attempts to capture and exploit oceanic life through legislation, technology and scientific measurement.

On the ground floor, tracings (2024) features three greyscale animations roving over seascapes on ten-inch tablets accompanied by an eerie, quiet soundtrack, and in submerged point cloud 2 (2024), a series of LED panels greet visitors. These overhead views give way to stories of exploration in a six-channel video, accounts of immersion (2023). This work combines grainy archival footage of the launch of John Wilson and George Colquhoun’s Pisces III submersible, dubbed by the narrator as a “big event in modern science”, and the sombre account of its later recovery from the seabed, after becoming dislodged from its mothership, which jostles with the artists’ own high-res footage of brilliantly coloured coral reefs.

The exhibition’s titular piece, draft fissure (2023), in the ground-floor gallery’s last room, comprises a series of mini projectors over Perspex sheets, stacked atop old seismological charts, documenting oceanic extraction off Ireland’s west coast that mimic enlarged microscope slides. These silent, looped projections show deep sea mining procedures that are currently the subject of calls for a temporary pause from nations (including Ireland), scientists, environmentalists, and indigenous peoples.

Upstairs, the connections between deep sea and space exploration are more explicit. Slow resound (2023) places the viewer in a black, custom constructed chair to watch a looped video. Here, the scale seems impossible to pinpoint, the net undulating across the screen at once vast and fine. Two installations in the central room upstairs reiterate this approach: pay zone (2023) and transition zone (2024) comprise clipboards, bulging with seismological charts on acetate, alongside copies of the Law of the Sea and guidelines governing space exploration, respectively. On the opposite wall, between poison and cure models for extra-terrestrial ecologies (2024), featuring unglazed porcelain and coral and a 3D-printed sculptural model, and of antique (or sun-shy) sea (2023), frame the Georgian fireplace.

A ten-minute video, Daggertooth (2023), focuses on moments of labour, showing the backs of Hi-Vis clad workers, hauling nets and cleaning decks, their hands sorting through still-living marine creatures, as the radio plays faintly in the background. This return to the quotidian is a reminder that the processes of exploring, examining, and extracting from the sea continuously unfold.

Where eco-critical art often attempts to prompt action through utopian or dystopian reimagining of the future, or where

STEM-funded projects domesticate data by transforming it into music or immersive visuals, O’Brien takes a different route. In untangling the knotty data narratives we construct about unknown and unknowable frontiers, O’Brien frames our hope for salvation through science as akin to eucatastrophe – a neologism coined by J.R.R. Tolkien meaning a sudden or miraculous reversal of the fairy-tale hero’s fortunes, otherwise known as a happy ending. This is an exhibition about envisioning the Atlantic; however, like the work beneath the surface that it exposes, ‘draft fissure’ is equally an (at times uncomfortable) envisioning of ourselves.

Lucy Elvis

Dr

is a curator, writer and philosopher who teaches at the University of Galway.

All images: Martina O’Brien, ‘draft fissure’, installation view, Galway Arts Centre; photographs by Tom Flanagan, courtesy of the artist and Galway Arts Centre.

Fingal County Council and RHA Studio Award 2024

Fingal County Council Arts Office in partnership with the RHA are offering an opportunity of a funded studio space for a professional artist for a period of one year, commencing end of October 2024. The award is open to practising artists at all stages in their professional careers working in visual art.

The award offers an artist the opportunity to develop their practice within the institutional framework of the RHA and covers the cost of studio rental and administration.

To be eligible to apply, applicants must have been born, studied or currently reside in the Fingal administrative area.

Closing date for receipt of applications: Friday 19th July 2024 at 4.00pm

Visit www.rhagallery.ie to complete an application form.

For further information please contact the RHA by email at annie@rhagallery.ie www.fingalarts.ie

A Place for Art Fingal County Council and Graphic Studio Dublin Fine Art Print

Residency Award 2024

Fingal County Council Arts Office in partnership with Graphic Studio Dublin are offering two Fine Art Print Residencies for professional artists at any stage of their career, working in any discipline, who are interested in exploring print processes.

The two-week long residencies, in Winter 2024, will provide artists with an opportunity to develop creative printmaking projects. Selected artists will each work with a Master Printmaker to produce a limitededition series and artists proofs will enter the Fingal County Council Art Collection.

To be eligible to apply, applicants must have been born, studied or currently reside in the Fingal administrative area.

Closing date for receipt of applications: Thursday 25th July 2024 at 4.00pm

Visit www.graphicstudiodublin.com to download an application form.

For further information please contact Graphic Studio Dublin by email at info@graphicstudiodublin.com

www.fingalarts.ie www.fingal.ie/arts

Fingal, A Place for Art

Fingal,

Autotheory

BARBARA KNEŽEVIĆ CONSIDERS INTIMATE AND VAST SCALES AT THE 60TH VENICE BIENNALE.

THE 60TH VENICE Biennale is curated by Adriano Pedrosa and titled ‘Foreigners Everywhere (Stranieri Ovunque)’ after an artwork of the same name by the Palermo-based collective, Claire Fontaine. Themes of foreignness and the associated global forces of colonialism, imperialism, indigeneity, and migration proposed in Pedrosa’s vision are largely reflected in the national pavilions that operate alongside the curated exhibition. In an expansive exhibition that addresses global themes, it is often artworks and narratives on a more intimate or embodied scale that bridge the gaps, allowing for more nuanced considerations of the impacts of migration, war and displacement, as well as notions of the centre and the periphery. In this context, it seems appropriate that the artworks I responded to most strongly are those that relate to my own familial history of migration: I am Australian/Irish with Yugoslav and Polish parents. My reflections are broadly informed by ‘autotheory’, described by Feminist theorist, Lauren Fournier, as a methodology that allows for autobiographical, lived, embodied, haptic and experiential practices to inform and produce theoretical outcomes.1

Upon entering the curated exhibition in the Arsenale, the first artwork encountered is an installation, titled Takapau (2024), by Mataaho Collective – the long-running collaborative practice of four Māori artists: Terri Te Tau, Bridget Reweti, Sarah Hudson, and Erena Arapere-Baker. In the Arsenale, Mataaho Collective has integrated reflective strips (recognisable from hi-vis vests of construction and trade workers) to construct a large canopy using indigenous weaving traditions. This vast and intricate structure is comprised of 6km of Polyester straps, stainless steel buckles, 480 rachets and 960 j-hooks. The collective describe this work as being “inspired by whariki takapau, finely woven mats that elevate and add mana to special events such as weddings, births and tangihanga” (mataahocollective.com). Forming part of Pedrosa’s commitment to foreground First Nations cultures, this sculpturally sen-

sitive work brings together labour politics and Māori ceremonial practices to generate a sense of reverence in the architectural space. In the absence of a New Zealand Pavilion at this year’s biennale, artists from New Zealand are strongly represented here and elsewhere throughout the curated exhibition.

Further into the curated exhibition is The Zoetrope, a circular structure housing 39 films from the Disobedience Archive (disobediencearchive.org). With a focus on social disobedience, the films are divided into two sections – Diaspora Activism and Gender Disobedience – and displayed modestly on small screens. Referencing the pre-film animation device that provided the illusion of motion, The Zoetrope, in this instance, functions as a spatial and curatorial strategy to slow viewers down, ensuring passage through this labyrinth of moving image. Featured in the archive is Yugoslav film- maker, Želimir Žilink, one of the foremost proponents of the Yugoslav Black Wave (Crni Val) movement of 1960s, which sought to describe social alienation, poverty, homelessness and migration through experimental cinematic techniques and docu-drama. Žilnik’s Inventur – Metzstrasse 11 from 1975 is a single shot 16mm film, depicting the stairwell of an apartment block in the old centre of Münich, which a succession of tenants descend one by one. They stop to speak to camera in their mother tongue, stating who they are, their opinions of Germany, and their plans and hopes are for their lives. These migrants living in Germany are ‘guest-workers’ and are predominantly from Yugoslavia, Greece, Italy, and Turkey.

On a screen to the left of Žilnik’s work is a film by Pinar Ögrenci, titled Inventory 2021 (2021) – a remake of Zilinik’s 1975 film, set in an apartment block in the former East German city of Chemnitz. Ögrenci’s film emulates the central device of Žilnik’s film: each resident stops and states their name to camera and voices their thoughts on Germany, and their challenges and hopes. However, in Ögrenci’s version, those descending

the stairs are predominantly Middle Eastern and Asian migrants. Together, these two films create an emotive and intimate portrait of migration in different milieus. The construction of successive personal narratives raises questions about the nature and causes of migration and its impacts on the lives of individuals.

Also reflecting the power of personal and embodied narratives, Repeat After Me II (2024) by Ukrainian collective, Open Group, is presented in the Polish Pavilion. The participation of Open Group (comprising members Yuriy Biley, Pavlo Kovach, Anton Varga) was announced by Poland’s Ministry of Culture late last year, after the previously commissioned exhibition was rejected by the country’s newly elected liberal Civic Coalition government, who replaced the right-wing Law and Justice party. Repeat After Me II comprises two large-scale video-portraits of Ukrainian civilian refugees. Each person speaks to camera and viscerally describes the sounds of weaponry and firearms that they experienced during the ongoing conflict. Their familiarity with the sounds of war is chilling and borne of traumatic experience; yet this knowledge is also what may have allowed them to survive. These people describe the sounds, and then invite the viewer to repeat after them the thrum and crash of heavy artillery, bombs, and incendiary devices. A bank of microphones is installed in the space, extending the invitation to join in the chorus; however, when I attended, the assembled audience watched silently. Repeat After Me II is a portrait of the impacts of war on ordinary people rendered through an embodied sonic experience.

Bringing vast ancestral temporalities into the intimate scale of the Australian Pavilion is the Golden Lion-winning installation, Kith and Kin (2024) by First Nations artist, Archie Moore. The pavilion is dimly lit, and upon entering, it takes some time for one’s eyes to adjust to the light. Engulfing the black walls and ceiling is Moore’s vast family tree – charting his Kamilaroi and Bigambul relations back over 65,000 years – which is rendered by hand in chalk. Each entry in this historical kinship map is instructive. Many entries in the family tree indicate the violent and oppressive influences of White colonisers, such as recording where the names of First Nations children first begin to appear anglicised. Temporally further back in the family tree, the Kamilaroi and Bigambul language is more prevalent. There are also blank spaces, indicating the trauma of historical occurrences of massacres and disease. Surrounded by a moat of water, a large table is centrally placed in the pavilion, displaying stacks of coroners’ reports, relating to First Nations deaths in police custody. These reports are situated just out of view; spatially obscured and heavily redacted. Clearly visible on these reports is the coat of arms of Australia, emblematic of state bureaucracy. Given the recent failed referendum in Australia concerning the proposal for First Nations representation in parliament, the success of Moore’s work on an international stage seems a particularly poignant gesture of cultural recognition. Moore’s painstakingly researched and exquisitely rendered family tree is at once intimate to him and his kin yet is universally recognisable as a means with which to track and understand broader histories of white, colonial, state oppression.

Barbara Knežević is an artist and lecturer at TU Dublin.

1 Lauren Fournier, Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art Writing and Criticism (London: MIT Press, 2021)

After

Pavilion of Poland; photograph by Matteo de Mayda, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia.

Foreigners Everywhere

LINDA SHEVLIN REPORTS ON THEMES OF COLLECTIVISM AND RESISTANCE AT THE 60TH VENICE BIENNALE.

THEMES OF OTHERNESS, the foreign, the outsider, and the stranger resonate throughout the 60th Venice Biennale. ‘Stranieri Ovunque / Foreigners Everywhere’ takes its title from an ongoing series by feminist collective, Claire Fontaine, in which this expression is translated into diverse languages, rendered in multicoloured neon, and installed above the vast Arsenale shipyards.

Curated by Adriano Pedrosa, Artistic Director of the São Paulo Museum in Brazil, this edition of the biennale continues to wrangle with its historical ties to nationalism and colonialism. Pedrosa’s curatorial approach seeks to highlight queer artists, Indigenous artists, and artists from the Global South, not as a decolonial practice but in an effort to challenge the established art canon and to broaden the knowledge and perspectives of biennale audiences –a significant and commendable approach which builds on the legacies of previous biennales, including the 2015 and 2022 editions, curated by Okwui Enwezor and Cecilia Alemani respectively.

Pedrosa, in fact, implicates himself in this thematic framework, as the first Latin American curator to be appointed, and the first openly queer curator in the history of the biennale. Furthermore, he comes from Brazil, where Indigenous and outsider artists have recently begun to receive critical attention. Pedrosa’s central exhibitions almost exclusively feature these formerly marginalised artists, with a strong focus on textiles, painting, and folk art.

With origins in the World’s Fairs of the colonial era, the biennale is traditionally organised into national pavilions – many of which are neoclassical buildings, funded through extractivism – providing an increasingly outdated and problematic exhibition framework. This year, there are 86 participating countries, four of which are present for the first time: the Republic of Benin, Ethiopia, the United Republic of Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste. Indigenous and First Nations artists are also presented in some national pavilions, including those of Brazil, the United States, Australia, and Denmark (labiennale.org). Inspired by Pedrosa’s curatorial theme, many countries have opted to interrogate concepts of nationhood, belonging, collective action, and community. However, this collective focus also prompts re-evaluation of individual artists habitually representing national pavilions.

The Netherlands pavilion attempts to address injustice and repatriation with an exhibition by Dutch artist Renzo Martens and his long-term collaborators, the Congolese collective Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (CATPC), titled ‘The International Celebration of Blasphemy and the Sacred’. The pavilion’s façade and entrance have been splattered with palm oil, and as visitors step into the space, they are met with the strong smell

of cocoa. Both the palm oil and the prized dark cocoa were grown and harvested by the multinational, Unilever, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Through sales of their chocolate sculptures, the artists have bought back and reforested some of their ancestral land. A central theme of the exhibition is the mechanics of repatriating a wooden sculpture, depicting Maxillien Balot, a Belgian colonial official who forcibly recruited Congolese villagers to work on plantations. He met his demise in 1931 during an uprising against colonial rule; the villagers carved a sculpture in his form, believing it would trap his angry spirit. Decades later, it fell into the hands of a Western collector, who in turn sold it to the Virginia Museum. The piece is on temporary loan and displayed at White Cube, an art space on a disused plantation in the DRC where CATPC are based, and live streamed to the Dutch pavilion in the Giardini. No stranger to controversy, Martens describes the ongoing project as a form of reverse gentrification and institutional critique – one that maps the global art market against the imperial histories of looting, slavery, and extraction, upon which modern art was founded. However, Martens has previously been criticised for benefitting from the very same structures of power that he seeks to critique.1

Utilising his distinctive, multilayered style, artist and filmmaker John Akomfrah deftly combines stories from marginalised communities in the pavilion of Great Britain. Presented across two floors, ‘Listening All Night to the Rain’ brings together eight multimedia and sound installations as a series of ‘cantos’, in reference to Ezra Pound’s epic poem. The artist presents non-linear cycles of audio clips and visually arresting imagery – comprising new footage, found images, and archival material – which convey the stories and memories of immigrant communities in Britain, including the Windrush Generation. Bodies of water play a central and connective role, as receptacles for memory, visual and sonic narratives, while alluding to the transitory state and journeys of migrants. This meticulous installation continues Akomfrah’s exploration of themes like decolonisation, racial injustice, and migration, with a renewed emphasis on the act of listening and the auditory experience.

Pro-Palestinian protests were inevitable at this year’s biennale, fuelled by the controversial decision to allow the participation of Israel to proceed.2 Israeli artist Ruth Patir and curators Mira Lapidot and Tamar Margalit ultimately made the decision to not open the Israeli pavilion, although it’s worth noting that the installed work is still visible from the exterior – an act perceived as ‘performative’. The soft power of collective action and community was evident in a group exhibition in the South West Bank, organised by Artists + Allies x Hebron and presented in collaboration with Dar Jacir

for Art and Research – an artist-led space in Bethlehem co-founded by Emily Jacir. Despite Italy not recognising Palestine as a sovereign state, and thus not allowing for the creation of a Palestinian pavilion at the biennale, Palestinian artists and their allies were represented in this collateral event. ‘Landworks, Collective Action and Sound’ presents works exploring themes of attachment to land and heritage by both emerging and established artists. Startlingly personal, many of these works have been directly informed by artists’ own experiences, embodying the idea that ‘home’ is strongly rooted in many traditional and communal practices.

Conversely, Russia has not been permitted to participate in the biennale since its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. This year, a late decision was made to lend their pavilion in the Giardini to the State of Bolivia – a gesture rumoured to form part of Russia’s larger strategy to gain access to Bolivia’s mining reserves.3 The display of Bolivian, South American, and Latin American artists lacks coherent focus or direction, while ironically serving to undermine the illusion of Russia as an international ally, benefactor, and supporter of Indigenous people.

Questions of national representation have not been resolved in this iteration of the biennale, but new directions now seem more possible, as artists surround themselves with their communities and interrogate this global platform from within. Where Pedrosa’s curatorial provocation seeks to explore the estrangement and dispossession of feeling foreign in a globalised world, it also simultaneously demonstrates the need to expose the violent histories that brought us to this point, ultimately revealing Western imperialism as the most foreign force of all.

Linda Shevlin is an independent curator/producer based in County Roscommon.

1 See for example: Claire Bishop, ‘Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise’, Artforum, May 2017.

2 Charlotte Higgins, ‘‘No death in Venice’: Israel-Gaza tensions infiltrate biennale’, The Guardian, 19 April 2024.

3 Sophia Kishkovsky, ‘Russia lending its Venice Biennale pavilion to Bolivia’, The Art Newspaper, 1 April 2024.

Claire Fontaine, Stranieri Ovunque (Autoritratto), Foreigners Everywhere (Self-portrait), 2024, double sided, wall or window mounted neon, framework, transformers, cables and fittings, dimensions and colours variable; Yinka Shonibare, Refugee Astronaut (2015-ongoing); photograph by Marco Zorzanello, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia.

Island City

VALERIE BYRNE OUTLINES A SCULPTURE TRAIL IN CORK CITY CENTRE.

ISLAND CITY: CORK’S Urban Sculpture Trail is a unique trail of five public artworks, featuring work by six artists, for locals and visitors to enjoy. Located on the central island in Cork City, the trail is easily walkable. It animates the city and illuminates Cork’s unique heritage in an arresting, intriguing, and playful way.

Island City presents the best of high-quality contemporary arts practice in the public realm. The artists were invited to reflect on the rich history and heritage of the city centre locations and their resulting artworks offer the audience a fresh perspective on familiar sites. The commissioned artworks are Boom Nouveau by Forerunner (Cook Street); The Face Cup by Fiona Mulholland (The Exchange Building, Princes Street); Sentinels [flew through the ages in the shape of birds] by Niamh McCann (Carey’s Lane); Urban Mirror by plattenbaustudio (Cornmarket Street); Tempus Futurum by Brian Kenny and Winter Sun by Elinor O’Donovan (Triskel Christchurch).

Island City is a Cork City Council project, fully funded by Fáilte Ireland under the Urban Animation Scheme, with commissioning support from the National Sculpture Factory. Fáilte Ireland’s Urban Animation Capital Investment Scheme was a new pilot Capital Grants Scheme for Local Authorities aimed at supporting sustainable tourism development, through public realm and urban animation projects that have potential to transform and reimagine urban centres for visitors and communities. Cork City Council’s proposal to commission a trail of five public artworks for the city centre was selected through an open-call process.

In 2021 Cork City Council was awarded the Urban Animation grant, and in early 2022 Cork City Council engaged with National Sculpture Factory to devise the commissioning framework. An Advisory Panel, comprising invited external curators with specialist expertise in Public Realm Commissioning, was convened including Emmett Scanlon, architect; Mariam Zulfiqar, Director of Artangel UK; Pádraic E Moore, curator; and Sarah Searson, curator. The panel created a shortlist of 12 artists – three artists for each of the four identified locations.

Studio Unthink was appointed to create the visual identity and branding for the project and in spring 2022, the shortlisted artists were invited to make a submission and received a proposal development fee. The final selection of the four artists was made by a Selection Panel, including invited experts Eva Rothschild, artist; Dr Linzi Stauvers, IKON Gallery, Birmingham; Nathalie Weadick (former Director Irish Architecture Foundation); and representatives from Fáilte Ireland and Cork City Council.

In summer 2023, installation began across the four locations and the open call was issued for the fifth commission, a Digital Mapping Projection. A second international selection panel (including Hilary O’Shaughnessy, curator; Aideen Barry, artist; Jarkko Halunen, Director, Lumo Light Festival, Oulu, Finland; and representatives from Fáilte Ireland and Cork City Council) selected two projects: Tempus Futurum by Brian Kenny and Winter Sun by Elinor O’Donovan. All five artworks were installed by December 2023 and the Island City trail was officially launched by Lord Mayor Cllr Kieran McCarthy with an event held in Triskel Christchurch on 12 December, including a public conversation with the artists, facilitated by Sarah Searson.

In April 2024, we saw the conclusion of Tempus Futurum by Brian Kenny, which ran from December 2023 – April 2024, and we’re looking forward to the

launch of Winter Sun by Elinor O’Donovan in October 2024.

Over the course of 2024, Cork City Council will deliver a comprehensive and accessible engagement programme for the trail in partnership with Arts & Disability Ireland, including bespoke wayfinding navigational tools and audio descriptions, a walking tour app designed by Studio Unthink, and guided walking tours, in collaboration with Sample Studios, which will offer audiences a wide range of additional materials, such as audio interviews with the artists, historical contextual information about the sites, and information and images about the fabrication of each artwork –providing greater opportunity to engage meaningfully with each artwork. For further details on the artworks see: corkcity.ie/islandcity

1. Forerunner, Boom Nouveau(2023); Cook Street

Boom Nouveau mimics the form of tangible, everyday urban street furniture – the lamppost. The name refers to the rupture of the artwork emerging from the ground, with a nod to the influence of the craftsmanship of art nouveau. Created using historic methods of production, with familiar building materials alongside hand-blown glass and cast bronze, the sculpture shines a light on the city and encourages people to look up and explore the architecture as they navigate.

2. Fiona Mulholland, The Face Cup (2023); The Exchange Building, Princes Street

The Face Cup is a celebration of Cork’s rich prehistoric heritage. An artwork of large-scale sculptural reliefs, it is based on a collection of exceptional Bronze Age ceramic artefacts circa 3,800 years old, excavated by Cork archaeologists. A museum for an outdoor space, it plays testament to the rich history and hospitality of the building and area. The artwork is handmade from Styrofoam and fiberglass and finished in a gold effect.

3. Niamh McCann, Sentinels [flew through the

ages in the shape of birds] (2023); Carey’s Lane

Sentinels is a lane-length sculptural piece, influenced by the architecture, geography and migratory history of the street, a nod to the old and the new. The work, which is made with sustainable materials, is fixed above head height and held by the simple image of a seagull, perched atop a neon strip, sentinel-like. Intriguing and playful, the work animates the lane and responds to the shifting shape of the city.

4. plattenbaustudio, Urban Mirror (2023); Cornmarket Street

Urban Mirror is a beautifully crafted large table with an atmospheric globe light that provides a sculptural pavilion in a cultural corner of the city and a warming glow when the sun sets. A space intended to be used by the public to talk, eat, play and interact, it was inspired by the street’s vibrant history as a marketplace. Made of durable and playful stainless steel, the freeform table can seat up to 50 people.

5. Brian Kenny, Tempus Futurum (2023); Triskel Christchurch

Tempus Futurum echoes the adage, “a society thrives when elders plant trees under whose shade they’ll never rest.” It delves into the past, present and imminent future, exploring human impact on the environment. Scenes link human actions to nature’s fate, while 50 children envision the building’s future, sparking hope. The interactive finale reflects sustainability, showcasing the link between human choices and nature’s balance. It is a reflection on the city’s growth, urging consideration of today’s impact on tomorrow’s landscapes.

Valerie Byrne is Public Art Manager at Cork City Council. corkcity.ie

[L-R]: Fiona Mulholland working on The Face Cup, 2023; plattenbaustudio, Urban Mirror, 2023, Cornmarket Street; photographs by Clare Keogh, courtesy of Cork City Council.

Comórtas

CARISSA FARRELL DISCUSSES JOHN BYRNE’S NEW PUBLIC ARTWORK COMMISSIONED BY FINGAL COUNTY COUNCIL.

JOHN BYRNE’S NEW public artwork, An Comórtas/The Contest (2024), commissioned by Fingal County Council, was on temporary public exhibition in the Carnegie Library, Swords (1 May – 1 June 2024) prior to its permanent installation in the future Swords Cultural Quarter development. An Comórtas is described as a work, “created with, for and about the people of Fingal” that features 55 Fingal residents who volunteered to be part of this project through call outs in the local press, social media, and ‘street casting’ by Byrne himself. This brought forth an eclectic, charming and heroic cross section of individuals, couples, friends and families varying in age, ethnicity and sex.

An Comórtas is a composite, back-lit photograph made to look like a nineteenth-century Romantic painting, printed on PVC banner material, measuring seven by two metres. The composition for the work is lifted directly from two early iconic works from the period: Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa (1818–19), and Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People (1830). Byrne aligns the structure of both and scatters his cast into two groups over two specially constructed sloping rostrums. Drama is captured in a palette of warm earthy tones of cream, yellow, ochre, brown and deep red. A sublime Caravaggesque light lifts the restrained approach to costume, which is largely and deliberately the volunteers’ own. Around them, an implausible version of the Fingal coastline highlights its iconic features with sand banks leading to the sea, Ireland’s Eye, a Martello Tower, and an Aer Lingus airplane climbing into the sky. Technology and art direction are substantially evident in the making of An Comórtas, but its nucleus is powered by the volunteers and the artist’s interaction with them. These are ordinary and extraordinary humans whose presence resonates from the simplest things, their physical being, their sense of themselves, their belonging, consciousness, difference and commonality. Their unguarded joy and willingness to invest in Byrne’s vision anchors this work firmly in the public realm.

In an anteroom, a short video sees Byrne describe some of the technical and artistic decisions that were made during the production while avoiding the substantive question of the specific association between the Medusa and Liberty paintings and An Comórtas. Gericault’s masterpiece depicts a grotesque moment of human depravity attributed to the French state’s failure after the re-instatement of the monarchy in 1815, while Delacroix’s work commemorates the 1830 revolution that restored the republic. The juxtaposition of the extreme horror of the French Revolution with Byrne’s heroic rally of mindful citizens is difficult to reconcile. But this kind of amplified narrative ark is visible in previous work by Byrne, when, in 2016 he responded to an invitation by Dublin City Council’s LAB Gallery

to consider “what contribution we (artists) might make to future readings of the 1916 rising”, by reconstructing memories from his childhood holidays away from Belfast in a series of nostalgic pastoral photographs. Storytelling is Byrne’s analysis. On a practical level, the exaggerated dramatic style of nineteenth-century composition is a perfect instrument to explore a public art project involving such a large group of people. The potential for intrigue, rapport and drama is huge.

It is impossible to ignore the parallels of political turmoil and human tragedy in the source works against the backdrop of the current state of Irish affairs. In the foreground, a circle of men, women and children strain backwards pulling on ropes from one another; behind them a young man and woman reach higher ground, seeking rescue with a raven and a red cloth. Many individuals gravitate ceremoniously to the centre, carrying ‘offerings’ of Golden houses. Others hold tightly to provisions of bread, vegetables, crops, farmyard animals, and lumps of rubble, while a young boy formally displays an electric plug. Byrne hints to certain issues in these totemic objects and ceremony; housing, the cost of living, climate change, and so on. But An Comórtas explores these on human terms;how the internal world of the individual registers and processes events in the external world, so that life can go on. The cast of An Comórtas persevere side by side, present, together, homogenous and different. Their relevance is as a collective and as individuals – as citizens of Fingal, Ireland, and the world.

Carissa Farrell is a writer and curator based in Dublin.

All images: John Byrne, An Comórtas/The Contest 2024, back-lit, digitally printed PVC, installation view, Carnegie Library, Swords. Commissioned through Fingal County Council’s public art programme, Infrastructure 2018-2024; photograph by Louis Haugh, courtesy of the artist and Fingal County Council.

Joanne Laws: Perhaps you could start by outlining the environment and appetite for sculptural practice in Ireland in the late 70s, as you graduated from Crawford School of Art and Design?

Biomorphic Forms

JOANNE LAWS INTERVIEWS EILIS O’CONNELL ABOUT THE EVOLUTION OF HER PRACTICE OVER FIVE DECADES.

Eilis O’Connell: There was a passion and intensity for sculpture in those days. I remember a show called ‘OASIS’ (Open Air Show of Irish Sculpture) and annual exhibitions like Living Art and Independent Artists. I first exhibited my work as part of The Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1972. Can you believe that I was so brazen, to put my work into a national show when I was only in second year of art college? We were encouraged by John Burke to submit work and that experience was brilliant; it gave me confidence. There were a lot of talented people around but sadly many of them emigrated. There was nothing to stay for; it was very tough. I know artists complain nowadays about having no space, but it was absolutely dreadful in the 70s and 80s. You just accepted that you had to work in some old, freezing, derelict building. Property had no value so it wasn’t maintained, but on the plus side, you could rent places fairly cheaply. Lots of people emigrated during the recession and didn’t come back. I eventually emigrated in the late 80s.

JL: You were a cofounder of the National Sculpture Factory in Cork. How did this come about?

EC: I worked with Vivienne Roche, Maud Cotter, and Danny McCarthy on securing a studio for sculptors in Cork city in the mid to late 80s. I was a member of the Arts Council for two years previously and made them aware of the lack of studio space in the city, that was written into policy and funding was allocated. So, it was just a matter of finding a building. The old tram depot on Albert Road in the city centre was ideal, but it took a long time to get the project off the ground. Maud, Vivienne and Danny did

All Images: Eilis O’Connell, ‘In the Roundness of Being’, installation view, VISUAL Carlow; photographs by Ros Kavanagh, courtesy of the artist and VISUAL Carlow.

most of the work, as by that time I was based in London.

Around this time, there was a public backlash to one of my public artworks, The Great Wall of Kinsale (1988), which was just a nightmare, so I decided to leave Ireland. I moved to London by myself with basically nothing. Then I got the PS1 residency, so I went to New York, where I met a woman from Delfina Studios, who was asking if anybody wanted a free studio in London. I applied and got a free studio for two years which was a stroke of luck. Delfina was brilliant and really supportive; during the two years, I had four open studios, which was a great way of meeting people.

I then began to apply for public art commissions in the UK. Strangely enough, the Kinsale piece ended up being my saving grace and opened doors for me; the opportunities just flowed. I won a competition for Cardiff Bay Arts Trust, Secret Station (1992), a sculpture in patinated bronze and galvanized steel. I did another one in Milton Keynes, The Space Between (1992), in bronze and fibre optics, and another for the London Docklands Development Corporation. I was on a roll of winning competitions and thought it would never end. After a while, public art competitions became a big thing in England, with huge budgets, and people like Anthony Gormley going for them. Those were really exciting times.

JL: Speaking of Gormley, his Sculpture for Derry Walls (1987) had a very strong public reaction too. I think it was covered in graffiti and even had moulten plastic poured over it at one stage?

EC: Yes, one of the figures had burning tyres placed around its neck. Gormley had a great line about that; he said that the sculpture was “catharsis for the city” – something for people to vent all their anger on the piece. It’s made of cast iron, so it could take the abuse. In a way, it’s a perfect piece for that time and space.

JL: Your practice involves dual strands: public artworks that are often vast in size; and the sculptural objects you make on a more domestic scale. How do you approach this tension?

EC: I make everything small, even in preparation for something bigger, so I can solve all the problems on a small scale first. If you make a small version of something, it’s only a matter of scaling it up and engineering, which I do quite instinctively. I would prefer to just be working on big things all the time, but the only way to fund that is through commissions. The context of where and how a sculpture is placed is so important; it has to be allowed to create its own atmosphere.

JL: Dramatic variations in scale were also seen in your survey exhibition at VISUAL Carlow, which included a vast new commission for the Main Gallery. At over 21-metres in length, it’s possibly the largest sculpture I have ever encountered in a gallery in Ireland. What can you tell us about this work?

EC: I had a completely different plan for that show, but Benjamin Stafford (Visual Arts Curator at VISUAL) saw a piece in my garden, Capsule for Destinies Unknown, which I had made for a contemporary sculpture exhibition in England called ‘ARK’ in 2017. I thought of the ark as a symbol of refuge at a time when so many refugees were crossing the Mediterranean Sea and tragically drowning. The original piece is asymmetrical and is bolted into concrete outside, so I came up with an idea to make a second version that would be symmetrical, in order to balance. Capsule for Destinies Unknown – series two (2024), comes apart in three pieces. It held the main space in VISUAL perfectly; the width of the space is great, so it was interesting to deal with it diagonally. The viewer had to walk around the piece and were forced to really look at it.

JL: How do you sell your work?

EC: I show with a gallery in London and with Solomon Fine Art in Dublin, so they kind of keep me going. And then I have my sculpture garden – an acre of land surrounding my studio at The Creamery in Cork. It was

a concrete jungle when I first got it, and I’ve spent a lot of time re-landscaping, planting trees, and levelling out areas. It is all hills and I have learnt so much from placing the sculptures, moving them around, seeing how one piece affects the others, and so on. People make appointments to visit, and I have open studio days, and that is how I sell the big pieces.

JL: That sounds very DIY.

EC: Oh, it’s pure DIY. The only way to survive as a sculptor is by doing things myself. Nobody’s going to come and do it for you; it’s a lot of work, maintaining the sculptures and keeping them looking pristine. Sometimes I get overwhelmed by my studio with literally 50 years of work stored in there. I keep things that I value, but I do have clear-outs from time to time. I still have a 40ft container full of stuff from my Douglas Hyde show in the 80s. They’re pieces I spent months making, and it’s really hard to know what to do with them.

JL: What are you working on at the moment?

EC: I’m doing a piece for Wilton Park in Dublin which is an homage to the pioneering Irish writer, Mary Lavin, who wrote for The New Yorker and other publications. In a world of male writers, she was really ahead of her time. I decided to cast a biomorphic piece in mirror polished stainless steel, which is a really difficult process. Few artists use this medium, so I just wanted to see if I could do it. We’ve done a test piece and so far, it’s brilliant. I’m making it in Spain and Greece. I used to do a lot of my commissioned work in Britain with good fabrication companies and foundries but with Brexit, this is now impossible.

JL: What do you think are the challenges for Irish sculptors?

EC: In a word, space. There’s a lack of space to show contemporary art on a large scale. Access to affordable studios and housing are massive issues for artists in Ireland right now, but perhaps housing more so. Looking on the bright side, the digital world has made it possible to be creative with no studio but for a sculptor it is imperative to have a dedicated space for simply messing around, learning how to use tools, and develop skills. That haptic element is crucial; there is something

very satisfying about making something by hand from scratch.

JL: To conclude, what can you tell us about your materials and values as a maker?

EC: Well fundamentally, I just love making things. I’ve always got about 20 things on the go. In an ideal world, I’d be in my studio making things all day long, but that’s not realistic. I have to deal with emails and collaborations, which can take away from one’s personal creative time. I like the social aspect of collaborating – it keeps my mind open to new possibilities and processes.

I used to make everything myself in steel but to be honest, I’m beyond that now. I don’t want to spend every day grinding metal; it’s a really hard way to make things. I still use steel occasionally for armatures and things, but now I use Jesmonite; it is a very versatile medium that you can pour or use like clay. I’m very curious about new materials. I worked with resin for ages and eventually decided that I hate it; resin looks beautiful but it’s toxic as hell. The thing about sculpture is that no matter what materials you use – wood, stone, concrete, plaster – the dust is hazardous. I switch materials because I like learning new things. The last thing that I want to do is repeat myself.

I’m fascinated by the structure and longevity of materials. Good materials are sustainable and the great thing about metal is that it has value, so it is recycled. Some of my small pieces get translated into stone and that has been another learning curve. Things that I make in metal cannot be made in stone simply because stone has no tensile strength, so it is hard to defy gravity. I have learnt to respect its weight while trying to remove as much material as possible from the block. Stone and bronze are so resilient. When buried for 3000 years, bronze will come up even more beautiful, with a patina that’s slightly etched. I love the fact that a metal or stone sculpture will outlive me.

Eilis O’Connell is an artist based between Cork and Kerry. ‘In the Roundness of Being’ was presented at VISUAL Carlow from 17 February to 12 May 2024. eilisoconnell.com

Do It Yourself

CLARE-BASED ARTIST RACHEL MACMANUS OUTLINES THE EVOLUTION OF HER ART PRACTICE TO DATE.

I LISTENED TO a podcast featuring the artist Laurie Anderson, who said: “If you want to get your work out there, just make it up. If you don’t have a tour, invent one. Don’t let lack of invitations stop you.” This quote defines my art practice. After school I went straight into NCAD and completed what was then called a visual communications degree. I worked as a freelance graphic designer and illustrator, then lived in New York for a couple of years. NYC’s energy and can-do attitude affected me profoundly. In 2003 back in Dublin, I retrained as a fitness instructor and worked full time in the fitness industry for the next 14 years.

In 2016, I started a remote learning MA in Fine Art through the Open College of the Arts (UCA) in the UK. Due to family and caring duties, I could not physically attend an MA programme. I graduated in 2019 and started working on my community-based drawing practice and making performance art.

Two elements that define my performance practice are my fitness background and being a carer to my child. Using the body as the site of the work was a natural progression from teaching fitness classes and competing in fitness competitions. The intense experience of caring for a child with a disability, one who is growing up in an ableist world, also finds its way into all of my work.

My practice is primarily divided between making performative art, drawing, and my work with Negative Space – an art collective I co-founded in 2021. To date, we have focused on public art and have painted over 37 public artworks in County Clare. Making public murals is important to me, as it bypasses the need for a gallery space, and allows all factions of the public to access the work. Our aim is to create site-specific works with a contemporary focus that nods to the local environment.

My performance practice started by making live art in my locality. I travelled to Limerick to perform with EVIL Collective and would make day trips to Belfast to perform with Re-Vision and Catalyst Arts.

During the pandemic, I made site-specific works-to-camera within 5km of my home.

In 2023, in a bid to promote awareness of performance as a medium in my locality, I started running workshops on performance art in Ennis, County Clare. These workshops were called ‘Here and Now’. I also wanted to cultivate a local performance network with which to work, since travelling to events and residencies is not always an option for me as a parent and carer.

In 2024, ‘Here and Now’ evolved into ‘p(art)y Here and Now’, a monthly participatory live performance art event in Ennis with a cohort of local artists from different disciplines. The event will move to other venues around Clare in the coming months and a summer performance, featuring artists from the Midwest region, is planned for 16 August at The Courthouse Gallery in Ennistymon.

Since 2021, I have been co-facilitating Creative Circles – a networking group for Clare-based creatives. We have over 150 members and meet every month to offer support and career advice to each other and share information and opportunities. A career highlight has been making these connections. I shut my laptop after finishing my MA and had to start from scratch, building a local group of peers. I am now fortunate to have a cohort of local artists, and an international cohort from my MA studies.

Recent work includes ‘Ringfenced’, a solo show of paintings and live performance for Mountshannon Arts Festival, at The Old Schoolhouse, Scarriff, County Clare, on 25 May (mountshannonarts.ie).

Negative Space has a portfolio of public artworks to complete this year, and I look forward to attending ‘La Pocha Nostra/ Vest and Page Alumni Summit’ at Live Art Ireland in Milford House, Tipperary, from 17 to 25 July.

Rachel Macmanus is an artist based in County Clare. rachelmacmanus.art

Change of Climate

ENVIRONMENTAL ARTIST EVELYN SOROHAN REFLECTS ON HER PRACTICE AND RECENT EXHIBITION AT GLÓR.

PRESENTED AT GLÓR in April, ‘Change of Climate’ was my fourth solo exhibition. This self-curated, experiential exhibition documented and celebrated my creative and collaborative Climate Art practice, which has emerged over ten years. My practice is essentially eco-visionary, exploring innovative interdisciplinary ways of reframing our relationship with our environment alongside developing participants’ creative and imaginative skills in a multidisciplinary framework.

Photography, painting, installation, and socially-engaged art are my chosen media, as I work across three core strands: research, studio, and participatory art. These interconnecting strands rely on collaborations with environmental scientists, educators, and public participation. With a background in education and leadership, I have been able to develop the necessary communication skills to form these important partnerships. One of my most successful collaborations involved creating an arts-based Climate Action Programme for schools with Clare Education Centre and Dr Alice D’ Arcy of STEAM Education – a company established to address critical and creative gaps in the education system (steam-ed.ie).

Importantly, videos and collages of this process were exhibited in the show, and participants’ creations were given equal weight to my own work. I believe in the democratisation of contemporary art, with participatory processes becoming significant markers of success.

Within every fibre of my being, I feel I have no choice but to make art that reflects the greatest threat to life on earth: climate change. I use zero-carbon methodologies and mediums to evoke public discussion and creativity, and my physical works are created from human-collected waste, plastics and old acrylic paints. I deliberately chose these materials to draw attention to the damage that fossil-fuel energy and plastics are doing to our climate. Participants are invited to use alternative materials in the experiential climate challenges I set within the workshops.

As visitors interacted with the exhibition, they embarked on a journey through different sections, reflecting in-depth

examinations of our ‘Change of Climate’. The larger pieces visually document macro views of Western consumerist and capitalist culture, while the micro views depict tiny but magnificent insects from my local lake. These were inspired by ‘Warming Stripes’, created by Professor Ed Hawkins to vividly show how average global temperatures have risen over two centuries (reading.ac.uk). The contrast between these perspectives is an essential part of the show, reflecting on how these local bio-indicators symbolise a human-made, global, catastrophic challenge.

As I collaborate with scientists, I am both fascinated and scared, and feel a tremendous urgency to live more sustainably. I learned that a third of native wildlife in my area has disappeared since 1975, my birth year. This leaching of life and colour from my locality and the broader global habitat is interpreted in my works using coloured barcodes inspired by Hawkins’s stripes. In conjunction with the work, I facilitated workshops in glór studio, enabling hundreds of pupils to appreciate nature and climate as they created the forms of their favourite wildlife using recycled plastics and paper. Their work was photographed and added to the exhibition as it grew throughout the show, alongside their imaginative coastal villages that included their very own glaciers made from my large ice cubes. I’m honoured that my show was very well received, with over half of the pieces being sold to private and public bodies, and hundreds of people visiting and creatively responding, including 14 school groups and three community groups.

Evelyn Sorohan is an environmental artist who draws on her educational and visual art backgrounds to create innovative, exploratory climate art. evelynsorohan.com

‘Change of Climate’ ran at glór in Ennis from 10 to 24 April. The exhibition was co-funded by Clare Arts Office, Creative Schools, and the Clare Creative Ireland Community Fund. glor.ie

Rachel Macmanus, Stubble Field 2,1, 2023, performance to camera, Grass and Soil Residency, Live Art Ireland, Tipperary, October 2023; photograph by Mark Leahy, courtesy of the artist.

[L-R]: Evelyn Sorohan, Banded Demoiselle, 2023, digital collage and waste acrylic paint; participant of a ‘Change of Climate’ workshop, Coastal Village, 2024, wastepaper and ice; images courtesy of Evelyn Sorohan.

Congruent

SARA CUNNINGHAM-BELL OUTLINES HER SCULPTURAL

PRACTICE AND CURRENT SHOW AT F.E. MCWILLIAM GALLERY.

THE TANGIBLE CALM of Belfast’s public sculpture brought me peace during those years of The Troubles, when the adults around me, clearly too focused on survival, seemed to neither see nor respect them.

First it was Elisabeth Frink and Barry Flanagan’s forms – hanging or standing amid car fumes and people rushing around the city – then F.E. McWilliam’s work in the silence of the Ulster Museum. These sculptures visually held me during my formative years. Unconsciously, these works seem to have slipped into my own material research, alongside the delights of nature and humankind’s connectivity. Perhaps this holistic mix has propelled my studio work to stand against the tide, whether social, economic, or political.

My studies flowed through Edinburgh College of Art, Strathclyde University, and Queen’s University. Notably, at the beginning of my art career, my work was presented at the Salon Grands et Jeunes D’Aujourd’Hui in Paris. I have continued to show widely, and my work is now housed in national and international collections. I am encouraged and continually amazed by our ability to keep going as professional sculptors, despite the many walls we hit.

I work from my studio on Northern Ireland’s Causeway Coast with sheep, birds, and the Irish hare as neighbours! Presently, some of my studio work is coming back from Chongqing in China with Sligo’s Hamilton Gallery, having toured to Beijing, Shanghai, and Chengdu (VA Gallery, Hong Kong), and sculpture work is currently showing with the Himalayan Garden & Sculpture Park in North Yorkshire.

Some recent public commissions have included Towards Tomorrow (2019), commissioned by Ulster University, a 9.5m tall sculpture, cast in clay calcined sustainable concrete – the first public sculpture using this medium – which was shortlisted for the Irish Concrete Award 2020. The 7.8-metretall sculpture, Carry Each Other / Lompair a Chéile (2023), was installed on Spring Road in North-West Belfast in August 2023. Aluminium cast in 265 parts that

were welded together, the sculpture was the first Belfast public sculpture designed from the beginning to incorporate English and Irish language in its name. THE BRIDGE:

Fiacha Dhubha Fhionglaise ar Foluain, Finglas Ravens Soar (2021) was commissioned by Sculpture Dublin for Kildonan Park in Finglas. Fabricated in Corten and Stainless Steel, the sculpture acknowledges the contribution of Dublin women to community and city life.

‘Congruent’ is my touring exhibition, which is currently showing at F.E. McWilliam Gallery in Banbridge, County Down (7 June – 2 September). Presenting a body of new sculpture, the exhibition looks at the domesticity and materiality of objects as both congruent and incongruent.

Congruence means to come together through the juxtaposition of seemingly disparate elements, thereby summoning our attention to notice connections. In the seventeenth century, philosopher Nicolas Malebranche argued that attention was “The natural prayer of the soul,” while twentieth-century novelist, Iris Murdoch, speaks of attentiveness as a way of “deepening experience to such a degree that a change of consciousness can be achieved.” Considering its title, materiality, and process, the viewer further animates a sculpture through their attention, engagement and close looking, enabling a collective voice.

Consistently, the work holds opposites –unity with disunity, harmony with disharmony – and these visceral sculptures vibrate with such tensions and paradoxes. They are made from local, storm-felled larch, oak, and beech, alongside reclaimed lead, steel, Glass Reinforced Plastic, concrete, and bronze. My sculptures are fabricated through a variety of processes, consciously leaving layers or traces of making that are fundamental to each sculpture’s existence.

Sara Cunningham-Bell is a Belfast-born artist who works from her studio on the Causeway Coast. cunninghambell.com

Recognisable Bodies

CLARE

SCOTT REFLECTS ON THE WORK OF WICKLOW-BASED ARTIST AND VAI MEMBER EOIN O’MALLEY.

JUMPING AND WRITHING like snakes, zigzagging furiously, darting or flaring across the canvas or paper like lightning, a menagerie of lines dance, uplifted on irregular fierce planes or furious scribbles of colour which in turn reverberate, fizz and glow with their own energy, all jostling, excited, immediate.

As a wheelchair user who has Cerebral Palsy, faced with many challenges of mobility and communication, it would have been easy for Eoin O’Malley to give up or to not even start. But with the help of long-time facilitator, artist Orla Callaghan, start he did. Using his mouth to hold a brush to paint with, O’Malley joined the conversation with his own inimitable lines and colour. O’Malley’s stable of marks, released from within the ellipse of his brush’s arc, gain their verve from the artist’s stroke.

O’Malley wields his brush to unleash energy with the greatest and most considered force. The incisive decision-making which elevates O’Malley’s work comes from a long wrangling which removes much of the unnecessary noise between the artist and the picture plane. That there is no room for error or regret means every move and mark retains immediacy while remaining part of the whole.

Ingenuity has always been a necessity. The adaptation of that other necessary painter’s prop has seen the creation of O’Malley’s windmill easel, which allows for the canvas to be spun around, worked on from all sides as well as from above. It is a development that has expanded the studio space, enough to add another dimension to the conversation. Diverse images provide the starting point. O’Malley’s most recent inspiration comes from charts of weather systems, particularly storm fronts, fittingly, given the windmill easel and its provision of a more omnipotent viewpoint.

O’Malley, labouring within a more awkward framework than the stretcher ever provided, has navigated a thicket of

obstacles unimaginable to most painters, to emerge in a world that may accept his travails as bona fides of his sincerity, but not enough to be taken as seriously as he should be, despite calls for diversity and inclusivity. O’Malley is not content to sit at the canvas. He does not want to smash the gallery space – he wants to inhabit it. He wants to join the party and he wants to go large. Determination and staying power never went out of fashion. Experiments with floor drawing, binding sticks to his wheelchair, as once Matisse used a stick to shifty his colours around, indicate O’Malley’s continued expansion. You may come to realise that the mainstream gallery space is where O’Malley needs to be. It will be interesting to see how, having spent the years exploring his own personal boundaries, O’Malley meets the limits of the gallery and of the systems of interpretation.

It will come. O’Malley is relentless; has learned to be, the hard way. With his mouth-wielded brush, his windmill easel, a mark-making chair, he is a weather system in the studio, he is a storm building and he is coming your way. Cut your cloth according to your measure they say. O’Malley’s cloth is as big as the sky.

This is an abbreviated version of an essay written by Clare Scott in 2023, which was supported through the Arts Council’s Art and Disability Connect Scheme, managed by Arts & Disability Ireland (ADI). adiarts.ie

Eoin O’Malley is a Wicklow-based artist who has been developing his practice since 2008, working alongside facilitator Orla Callaghan. On 28 July, Eoin will undertake his most ambitious project so far – a public wheel painting event in Baltinglass called ‘TRACKS’, made possible through Strategic Projects funding from Wicklow County Council Arts Office. eoinomalleyartist.ie

Sara Cunningham-Bell in her studio, May 2024; photograph courtesy of the artist.

Eoin O’Malley, Storm Ciara 2023, detail view, acrylic on canvas; image courtesy of the artist.

GRANTS,

AWARDS, JOBS, OPEN CALLS, COMMISSIONS

Jobs / Funding / Awards / Commissions

Art for Change Prize from Saatchi Applications are now open for the M&C Saatchi Group and Saatchi Gallery freeto-enter Art for Change Prize. Open to emerging artists around the world, this year’s prize asks artists to creatively respond to the theme ‘Tomorrow’ing: Visions of a better future’ for the chance to win up to £10,000 and exhibit their work at Saatchi Gallery, London.

The prize is free to enter for artsits. A total prize fund of £20,000 will be split between six regional winners, five to receive £2,000 each and one overall winner to receive £10,000. All artists will exhibit their winning works in a dedicated exhibition at Saatchi Gallery in London, a recognised authority in contemporary art, where the overall winner will be announced in November 2024. The exhibition will be open to the public until January 2025. All costs will be met by the organiser.

Visual Arts Project Award

The purpose of the Visual Arts Project Award is to support the planning, pre-production, production and presentation of work in the Visual Arts.

Please note: these guidelines have been changed for the upcoming round of the award. New guidelines will available before the window for applications opens.

There are three strands available to apply for under the Visual Arts Project Award.

The purpose of Strand 1 to support artists, curators, producers or eligible organisations to research, prepare and confirm plans for new, ambitious visual artwork for a future presentation.

The purpose of Strand 2: Mid-Scale Production is to support the producing and commissioning of ambitious projects in the visual arts, focusing on presentation and engagement with the public.

The purpose of Strand 3: Large-Scale Production is to support the producing and commissioning of ambitious projects in the visual arts, focusing on presentation and engagement with the public.

Deadline Wednesday 17 July, 11:59pm

Web mcsaatchi.com

Email artforchangeprize@mcsaatchi.com

AIC Scheme Bursary Award

The objective of the Artist in the Community (AIC) Scheme Bursary Award is to support individual professional artists in any artform to develop their collaborative socially engaged arts practice. There will be two awards of €15,000 awarded in 2024, offering the artists time to reflect on, and develop, their practice. One of the two bursary awards will be ringfenced for an early career/emerging artist with a track record in collaborative arts practice.

The bursary award is aimed at artists whose practice centres on collaboration with individuals or groups/ communities (non-arts professionals). Artists must have a track record of working collaboratively with communities of place or interest in the making and interpreting of art.

The bursary of €15,000 will provide the selected artist with time and resources to engage with and reflect on their practice. This may include time to carry out research. More particularly, it allows the artist to consider key questions associated with their collaborative arts practice and collaborative methodologies.

Deadline Monday 29 July, 5pm

Web create-ireland.ie

Email info@create-ireland.ie

Deadline Thursday 25 July, 5:30pm

Web artscouncil.ie

Email awards@artscouncil.ie

Hampson House Per Cent for Art

The Health Service Executive (HSE) is undertaking fit-out works at Hampson House, North Earl Street, Dublin 1 in 2024 and intends to implement the Per Cent for Art (PCFA) Scheme. This is a government initiative, first introduced in 1978, whereby 1% of the net construction cost of any publicly funded capital, infrastructural or building development can be allocated to the commissioning of a work (or works) of art, to set maximum limits.

While the primary purpose of the scheme is to facilitate the commissioning or acquisition of new art from professional artists, there is an increasing evidence based appreciation for the role arts have in improving the mental & physical, health and wellbeing, of those who use, visit or work in healthcare buildings. Artworks can provide more positive associations with healthcare environments for service users.

The total budget for this overall project is €70,000.

Deadline Wednesday 7 August, 12pm

Web hse.ie

Email rinawhyte@yahoo.com

To keep up-to-date with the latest opportunities, visit: visualartists.ie

Residencies

Cill Rialaig Residency Award 2024

This Kerry County Council sponsored two-week Residency at the nationally and internationally acclaimed Cill Rialaig artist retreat in Ballinskelligs, will allow two Kerry based visual artists 2 weeks accommodation in Cill Rialaig. Each artist will be awarded a 2 week residency in their own individual cottage studio on the spectacular Bolus Head rent free, with utilities paid by the Arts Office at Kerry County Council.

The Cill Rialaig Project, founded by Dr Noelle Campbell-Sharp, is a voluntary body (a company limited by guarantee) whose main aim is to develop and maintain a retreat for artists and writers from Ireland and abroad. It involved the rescue and redevelopment of the pre-famine village of Cill Rialaig as a retreat for artists, poets, writers, film makers and composers. Seven studios, a meeting house and library and a utility house have been completed at the village.

More than 5000 well known Irish and international artists have had residencies here.

Deadline Thursday 4 July, 1pm

Web kerrycoco.ie/arts

Email arts@kerrycoco.ie

Rhizome Residency

Kilkenny County Council Arts Office invites applications from artists across all art forms who have a clear passion for nature and the environment. Who are curious about how the impact of biodiversity loss and the climate crisis is likely to impact the arts and culture in Ireland.

We are looking to emulate nature in prioritising a rich and diverse ecology and as a result will prioritise applications that can demonstrate a unique perspective through lived experience.

This work is a response to the challenges of the climate crisis, acknowledging that the arts will need to adapt to survive and thrive, and we are taking our lead from the principals of biomimicry and natural systems. This residency is an effort to gather and layer the dynamic and complex range of art and culture in Kilkenny.

We are interested in applications from artists across art forms who have a clear passion for nature and the environment and are curious about how the impact of biodiversity loss and the climate crisis is likely to impact the arts and culture in Ireland.

Deadline Tuesday 16 July, 4pm

Web kilkennyartsoffice.ie

Email kathy.conlan@kilkennycoco.ie

Breaking the Patterns Residency Brought to you by (Carlow, Waterford, and Wexford Local Authority Arts Services), and led by Carlow County Council Arts Service under the Invitation to Collaborate Arts Council of Ireland scheme. This is a partnership with Capacity Ireland as part of a Creative Europe Project and brings this exciting new programme ‘Breaking the Patterns’ , which is now accepting applications from emerging visual artists based in the above counties.

Successful applicants to the programme will take part in a three-month artists residency in Lisbon, Portugal from mid September 2024 until mid December 2024. Artwork which is completed during the programme will be exhibited in an exhibition towards the end of the residency. There are a total of six available spaces on this programme and applicants will be assessed within a competitive context.

Deadline Friday 12 July

Web capacityireland.ie

Email rachaelspray@capacityireland.ie

Graphic Studio Fine Art Print Award Fingal County Council Arts Office in partnership with Graphic Studio Dublin is offering two fine art print residencies to professional artists at any stage of their careers, working in any discipline, who are interested in exploring print processes.

The two-week long residencies, in Autumn 2024, will provide artists with an opportunity to develop creative printmaking projects. Selected artists will each work with a Master Printmaker to produce a limited-edition series and artists proofs will enter the Fingal County Council Art Collection.

To be eligible to apply, applicants must have been born, have studied, or currently reside in the Fingal administrative area.

To apply, complete the application form on the Graphic Studio Dublin’s website: www.graphicstudiodublin.com

Deadline Thursday 25 July, 4pm

Web graphicstudiodublin.com

Email info@graphicstudiodublin.com

Making The Most of Membership

VAI MEMBERSHIP COORDINATOR MARY MCGRATH SHARES TIPS ON HOW VISUAL ARTISTS CAN MAXIMISE THEIR MEMBERSHIP.

MEMBERSHIP OF VISUAL Artists Ireland means many different things to different people. Being part of a large community of visual artists in Ireland, as well as overseas, is what motivates some members. Others want to support the work of VAI as the representative body for professional artists, and as a charity, in advocating for the rights and status of artists and providing practical support to artists at all stages of their careers. For others, it’s more about the transactional benefits, such receiving the Visual Artists’ News Sheet (The VAN), directly to their door six times per year, or accessing discounts on art supplies and equipment hire. Whatever the reasons for joining, all members can avail of a host of supports and services, and we encourage you to make the most of them.

Members are essential! Although we keep fees as affordable as possible (rates have not been increased for over 20 years), we depend upon the income from memberships to supplement our funding from the Arts Council of Ireland and Arts Council of Northern Ireland. More than that though, the larger the membership, the greater the mandate VAI has to represent the interests of individual artists and the broader visual arts sector. In return, we are constantly working to improve existing benefits and to bring new benefits to members.

For example, the move last year to our permanent head office at 2 Curved Street, allows members access to a dedicated space for visual artists in the heart of Temple Bar. Known as The Curve, our atrium space on the first floor is a place for members to connect, share ideas, host meetings and events. Members are also invited to book our meeting room and projection space at reduced rates.

Recently, we were delighted to make a substantial bank of new video resources available exclusively to members. Members can now access many hours of recordings, featuring VAI’s Lifelong Learning events including Artist Talks, Artist Cafe’s and a wide variety of professional development webinars.

As always, our Lifelong Learning Programme continues to deliver a range of talks, training and events online and in-person across the country at heavily discounted rates to members. Membership also offers artists opportunities to promote their practice nationally and internationally. Members are strongly advised to create a profile in the Artists Directory – a searchable database and valuable resource for the sector.

Members and non-members alike can submit listings free of charge, for dissemination via the VAI website, social media channels, and our twice weekly eBulletin, which is emailed to over 15,000 subscribers. There are also opportunities each year to apply for member-only awards, such as the VAI Experiment! Award; member-only open calls, including the VAI two-month residency at Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris; to speak at VAI events and contribute Member Profiles to the Visual Artists’ News Sheet.

Various member benefits become more relevant to artists at different stages of their

careers. We understand that artists are busy, and that availing of member benefits can take time and effort. Some of the ways that members can easily engage with VAI services are to:

• Ensure you are searchable and have your best work seen by updating your Artist Profile.

• Get the latest jobs and opportunities straight to your inbox each week and keep informed about what’s on by subscribing to our eBulletin mailing list.

• Publicise your exhibitions and events by submitting details and an image through the listings portal on our website.

• Engage with timely and pertinent issues by reading The VAN, released in print and electronic editions every two months (for back issues see issuu.com/visualartistsireland).

• Discover work from the edges of the ever-evolving creative landscape by following the miniVAN online (visualartistsireland.com).

• Save on art services and supplies through the Members Discount Scheme.

• Continue your professional development by attending VAI Lifelong Learning events.

• Get help and advice with many aspects of practice by searching in the detailed Artists Survival Guide on our website, booking a Help Desk Session, or contacting the Help Desk team in person, online or by phone.

• Don’t miss out on Get Together, Ireland’s national day for visual artists, taking place this year at IMMA on 19 November 2024!

In order to make the most of membership, we encourage you to make time when you can to avail of what VAI has to offer. We are here and have supports available to help artists succeed creatively and professionally. If you have any questions or would like to discuss how we can best support you, drop by the office, call +353 (0)1 672 9488 / +44 (0)28 9587 0361, or email info@visualartists.ie to discuss your needs and find out more.

Mary McGrath is VAI Membership Coordinator, and also manages the eBulletin service. visualartists.ie

Art in the Landscape: Festival of Change

VAI STAFF REPORT ON RECENT NETWORKING EVENTS TAKING PLACE AROUND IRELAND AND NORTHERN IRELAND.

THE FESTIVAL OF Change took place across two weekends in April as part of Art in the Landscape – an ongoing collaborative research project by Offaly County Council, Mayo County Council, and Visual Artists Ireland, which is funded through the Arts Council’s Invitation to Collaboration Scheme.

The Festival of Change included a diverse programme of events and activities, looking at the tangible and intangible impacts of art on place and people, including its social, economic, and cultural contributions. The festival was hosted in County Offaly (at Lough Boora Sculpture Park and Esker Arts Centre, Tullamore) on 5 and 6 April; and in County Mayo (at Áras Inis Gluaire, Belmullet, and the Tír Sáile Sculpture Trail) on 12 and 13 April.

In both locations, the programme commenced with Tionól, a gathering of individuals, groups and artists, who were invited to share their ideas about the possibilities

of art in the landscape. Ideas expanded upon during networking lunches included: The role of Bord na Móna as custodians of the peatlands; Lough Boora and Tír Sáile as custodians of significant sculpture collections, giving people the opportunity to experience ambitious artworks in their everyday lives; the role of culture in highlighting the magic of place; and in forging vibrant partnerships with others working in ecology, heritage, and so on.

Central to the festival was the commissioning of a new artwork for each location by dancer Hardeep Singh Sahota and photographer Tim Smith, both of whom have extensive experience in community collaboration. The launch of their exhibition, ‘Rhythm of Light’, took place as part of the programme, alongside Rita Duffy’s solo exhibition, ‘Midland: Mother Myth Memory’ at Esker Arts Centre. A poetry workshop, artist-led walks, and a Bhangra Céilí were among other programme highlights.

Visual Artists’ Café: Show and Tell – North West

ON THURSDAY 30 May, Visual Artists Ireland hosted a Visual Artists Café in the Waterside Theatre’s Gateway Studio in Derry/Londonderry. Providing a space for members to present and discuss their work in the company of other artists is a key aim of VAI’s Show and Tell events. On this occasion, five artists took part in presenting: Cara Donaghey, Emma Porter, Aodán McCardle, Lori Wiseman and Noreen Gallagher Brennan.

The range of practices was diverse and included: Donaghey’s examination of the operative aspects of archiving, printmaking and drawing; Gallagher Brennan’s sometimes large experimental paintings incorporating nature; Porter’s developing practice around portraiture; McCardle’s performative drawing installations; and Wiseman’s process-led “conversations with work.”

There was plenty to discuss and engage with after the presentations, and everyone left the café with a spring in their step.

Special thanks to the Waterside’s Arts Development team, Zoe McSparron and Aoife Boyle, who helped this café come to fruition and run smoothly. Speaking about the event, Zoe said: “Stemming from conversations with Brian around the lack of studio spaces in the Northwest, the vast amount of artists working in isolation in the area, and the missed opportunities for collaboration, sharing and creative connection, it was a joy to host this Show and Tell. With the imminent closure of the Waterside Theatre, Aoife Boyle and I will continue this collaboration with VAI via our new independent arts organisation, fUSe arts, which will launch this summer.” (see @ fuseartsni)

The Festival of Change, Tionól a gathering to share ideas about art in the landscape, Esker Arts Centre, Tullamore, Friday 5 April 2024; photograph by Paul Moore, courtesy of Offaly County Council Arts Office.

Summer 2024 Lifelong Learning

In-person Events

BELFAST

BELFAST PEER SUPPORT GROUP 1:

ARTIST TALK & SHOW AND TELL

Venue: VAI Office, 109-113 Royal Avenue, Belfast, BT1 1FF, Northern Ireland

Date: Tuesday 2 July

Time: 2pm – 5pm

Places: 20

Cost: Free (VAI Members); €5 (General Admission)

BELFAST PEER SUPPORT – GROUP 2:

ARTIST TALK & SHOW AND TELL

Venue: VAI Office, 109-113 Royal Avenue, Belfast, BT1 1FF, Northern Ireland

Date: Tuesday 16 July

Time: 2pm – 5pm

Places: 20

Cost: Free (VAI Members); €5 (General Admission)

BELFAST PEER SUPPORT – GROUP 1:

CURATOR TALK & 1:1 CLINICS

Venue: VAI Office, 109-113 Royal Avenue, Belfast, BT1 1FF, Northern Ireland

Date: Tuesday 13 August

Time: 2pm – 5pm

Places: 20

Cost: Free (VAI Members); €5 (General Admission)

BELFAST PEER SUPPORT – GROUP 2:

CURATOR TALK & 1:1 CLINICS

Venue: VAI Office, 109-113 Royal Avenue, Belfast, BT1 1FF, Northern Ireland

Date: Tuesday 20 August

Time: 2pm – 5pm

Places: 20

Cost: Free (VAI Members); €5 (General Admission)

Webinars

CREATING IDENTITY AND RECOGNITION

FOR MY ART PRACTICE WITH COLIN MCKEOWN (CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF WHITESPACE)

Date: Thursday 26 July

Time: 11am

Places: 50

Cost: €5 (VAI Members); €10 (General Admission)

OPTIMISING DIGITAL PLATFORMS TO PROMOTE MY ART PRACTICE WITH COLIN MCKEOWN (CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF WHITESPACE)

Date: Tuesday 20 August

Time: 11am

Places: 50

Cost: €5 (VAI Members); €10 (General Admission)

AN ARTIST’S GUIDE TO TAX (PART ONE) WITH GABY SMITH

Date: Thursday 22 August

Time: 11am

Places: 50

Cost: €5 (VAI Members); €10 (General Admission)

AN ARTIST’S GUIDE TO TAX (PART TWO)

COMPLETING A TAX RETURN ONLINE WITH GABY SMITH

Date: Thursday 29 August

Time: 11am

Places: 50

Cost: €5 (VAI Members); €10 (General Admission)

VAI Helpdesks

HELPDESK WITH OONA HYLAND

Date: Tuesday 2 July

Time: 2pm – 4.30pm

Places: 5

Cost: Free

HELPDESK WITH OONA HYLAND

Date: Thursday 11 July

Time: 2pm – 4.30pm

Places: 5

Cost: Free

HELPDESK WITH OONA HYLAND

Date: Thursday 18 July

Time: 2pm – 4.30pm

Places: 5

Cost: Free

HELPDESK WITH OONA HYLAND

Date: Thursday 25 July

Time: 2pm – 4.30pm

Places: 5

Cost: Free

HELPDESK WITH OONA HYLAND

Date: Thursday 1 August

Time: 2pm – 4.30pm

Places: 5

Cost: Free

HELPDESK WITH OONA HYLAND

Date: Thursday 15 August

Time: 2pm – 4.30pm

Places: 5

Cost: Free

HELPDESK WITH OONA HYLAND

Date: Thursday 22 August

Time: 2pm – 4.30pm

Places: 5

Cost: Free

HELPDESK WITH OONA HYLAND

Date: Thursday 29 August

Time: 2pm – 4.30pm

Places: 5

Cost: Free

Information and Bookings

ROI Information and Bookings

To register a place or to find information on any of our upcoming Professional Development events in the Republic of Ireland, visit: visualartists. ie/professional-development

Fees

NI Information and Bookings

To contact the NI Helpdesk or to inquire about upcoming Professional Development events in Northern Ireland, visit: visualartists.ie/ni-portal/ help-desk-advice/

VAI members receive preferential discount of 50% on fees for all VAI training and professional development events.

VAI NI Helpdesks

NI HELPDESK WITH BRIAN KIELT

Date: Wednesday 3 July

Time: 2pm – 4.30pm

Places: 5

Cost: Free

NI HELPDESK WITH BRIAN KIELT

Date: Wednesday 10 July

Time: 2pm – 4.30pm

Places: 5

Cost: Free

NI HELPDESK WITH BRIAN KIELT

Date: Wednesday 17 July

Time: 2pm – 4.30pm

Places: 5

Cost: Free

NI HELPDESK WITH BRIAN KIELT

Date: Wednesday 7 August

Time: 2pm – 4.30pm

Places: 5

Cost: Free

NI HELPDESK WITH BRIAN KIELT

Date: Wednesday 14 August

Time: 2pm – 4.30pm

Places: 5

Cost: Free

NI HELPDESK WITH BRIAN KIELT

Date: Wednesday 21 August

Time: 2pm – 4.30pm

Places: 5

Cost: Free

NI HELPDESK WITH BRIAN KIELT

Date: Tuesday 27 August

Time: 2pm – 4.30pm

Places: 5

Cost: Free

Beatrice Huntington, The Cellist, c.1925, © The William Syson Foundation.

Centre for Creative Practices presents

BETTINA SEITZ

UNDERWAVE

15 - 25 August 2024

THE COMPLEX

Absent Destinations

Seán Hillen

05.07.24 - 01.09.24 10am – 6pm | Admission FREE

Glebe House and Gallery, F92 WP70. T: 074 913 7071 | E: glebegallery@opw.ie

21-25 Arran Street East, Dublin 7, D07 YY97

Exhibition opens Monday to Friday 10 - 5, Saturday 12 - 5

Opening reception 15 August 6pm - 9pm

Lismore Castle Arts July - September 2024

Exhibitions across 3 locations:

Each now, is the time, the space

Leonor Antunes, Alexandre da Cunha, Rhea Dillon, Veronica Ryan Curated by Habda Rashid 23 March - 27 October 2024

Lismore Castle

Lee Mary Manning Anne Tallentire and Olga Balema Veedon Fleece Vertices, Curated by Mark O’Gorman

15 June - 18 August 2024 15 June - 18 August 2024

St Carthage Hall The Mill

ORIGINS Graduate Award

Leslie Allen Spillane 7 - 22 September 2024

St Carthage Hall

Lismore Castle Lismore Co Waterford, P51 F859

LAURA NÍ FHLAIBHÍN

Edge of Range

Curated by Catherine Bowe

Wexford Arts Centre

27 August - 3 October 2024

Image: Cecil Hurst, Cottonweed Plant, 1901. Published in Memoirs and Proceedings of the Manchester Literary & Philosophical Society (Manchester Memoirs) 46(1): 1-8 (1901).

Wexford Arts Centre | +353 (0)53 9123764 | wexfordartscentre.ie

Alexandre da Cunha, Sentinella II, 2020. Strip lights, benches, wiring, fittings, 184 x 98 x 48 cm. © Alexandre da Cunha. Courtesy the artist and Thomas Dane Gallery. Install view at Lismore Castle Arts. Photo: Jed Niezgoda