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Residency
Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2021
Samhain Chléire zine, Oileán Air residency artists; photograph © and courtesy of the artists
SITUATED OFF CORK’S south-west coast, Oileán Chléire (Cape Clear) is
Listening to Gorse RÓISÍN FOLEY DISCUSSES THE OILEÁN AIR RESIDENCY 2020 ON CAPE CLEAR ISLAND.
Ireland’s most southerly inhabited island and one of 26 EU Green Islands. Ruairí Ó Donnabháin is the áisitheoir of Oileán Air, a residency that invites artists from a broad range of disciplines to the island for a twomonth period (oileanair.com). Oileán Air aims to offer artists who work with the Irish language the space and time to do so in a supportive and stimulating environment. Brigid O’Dea, Vicky Langan and Noah Rose are the most recent artists to have participated in the programme. Ruairí set up the residency having lived on and off the island for two and a half years, working on a self-directed MA in Choreography from DAS Graduate School in Amsterdam. Culminating in a collaborative community-based performance in 2018 on Oileán Chléire, his MA research set out to explore the Irish language as a potentially regenerative and progressive force. The performance was followed by further conversations with its funders and Máirtín Ó Méalóid of Comharchumann Chleire Teo.1 Speaking about bringing the residency together Ruairí states: “For me it was about the artistic or conceptual concern of who gets to speak the language and who gets to work with it”. For this reason, having a grasp of Irish is a bonus but the main idea of the residency is to provide space for artists who want to work with the language. In March 2019, the first artists arrived on the island to begin the Oileán Air residency. Since then, the programme has had a further two rounds. Ruairí is around to help guide artists and to facilitate them in any way that he can. As a practicing artist, he makes work alongside the visiting artists and so imagines the programme as an artist-led experience. The residency does not put pressure on artists, in terms of output. A fee is paid
