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Sea Interludes

CORNELIUS BROWNE CONSIDERS THE SEA AS AN OMNIPRESENT FORCE IN THE WORK OF DONEGAL PAINTERS.

Cornelius Browne, Sea Interlude: Black Boat, 2022, oil on board; photograph by Paula Corcoran, courtesy of the artist.

THROUGHOUT THIS YEAR, I’ve been painting extremely small pictures of an extraordinarily vast subject. The pockets of my paint-spattered raincoat accommodate a dozen of these roughly cut boards. In the past, in a life conditioned by frugality, it pained me, after painting sessions, to scrape paint away. The boards give me a compact stage upon which to perform encores. Instinctively, I also now reach for one when something catches the corner of my eye, and I’m perhaps painting in the opposite direction. I find myself dashing along the shore, clutching palette and brush, knowing I can use my hand as easel. The sea is omnipresent where I live and work, so although I have painted more than a hundred tiny boards so far this year, without exception they dance to a maritime tune.

An ocean of music has been shaping my paintings since I was a schoolboy. I first heard Benjamin Britten’s opera, Peter Grimes (1945), on wobbly cassette almost 40 years ago. To move listeners from one physical location to another, Britten wrote Sea Interludes (1945); short pieces of music that, despite their brevity, capture with alarming fullness the majestic force moulding the lives of the townspeople in his isolated little fishing village. I clearly recall my young self, rewinding or fast-forwarding the tape relentlessly to locate the high grace notes of flutes and violins that mimicked so closely the sea birds I could hear from our home. Light on water was already attracting my attention as a juvenile painter, yet I felt no artist could better the shimmering arpeggios created by Britten’s harp, violas, and clarinets. In all likelihood, that cassette wore out on the Storm (1945) interlude – I remember the house empty one calm spring morning, giving me the opportunity to raise the volume. Within moments, our rickety dwelling was battered by thunderous waves.

My own ‘sea interludes’ take about the same time to paint as it takes to listen to one of Britten’s pieces: just under five minutes. I’m already in the flow, geared up to catch the wave. The sight we see from the

shore is the same as it has ever been; the sea is a place where the boundaries between past and present are slender. I paint from the fields my great-great-grandparents and their neighbours tilled for crops or walled for cattle. My children, however, look towards the horizon and ponder microplastics, extinction, and rising sea levels.

From the anonymous author of Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis in the ninth century, recounting St. Brendan’s westward journey in his medieval skin boat, to Dorothy Cross’s Ghost Ship (1999) in Scotsman’s Bay in Dún Laoghaire at the end of the twentieth century, the sea has been a pervasive presence in Irish art and literature. At 1,134 km, the Donegal mainland coastline is the longest in the country. Unsurprisingly, generations of Donegal artists have wrestled with the Atlantic.

Recently, I spent the 22nd anniversary of Derek Hill’s death teaching a plein air workshop in the gardens of the English painter’s former home, Glebe House in Donegal. In the eighties, having seen some of my paintings made using household gloss, Hill gifted me a set of oil paints – my first ever. In the fifties, roughly a decade before I was born, Hill gifted paints to one of Donegal’s most astonishing painters. James Dixon was at the opposite end of his life to me when he received these paints. This was a man already in his seventies, who observed Hill painting a large landscape outdoors one Sunday morning after mass on Tory Island, and remarked, “I think I could do better”. Dixon, at that moment, had hardly ever stepped foot off the small island where he was born, devoting his life to fishing. Describing Dixon’s work, Hill reached for the language of the sea, observing that they had been “painted quickly and instinctively – unrestful and turbulent”. Furthermore, when recollecting the bundles of paintings sent by Dixon, Hill stated: “I imagine them thrown into the sea and washed ashore after a storm”. Cornelius Browne is a Donegal-based artist.

Reflections on a Radical Plot

CLODAGH EMOE CHRONICLES THE EVOLULTION OF A LONG- RUNNING ECOLOGICAL PROJECT.

REFLECTIONS ON A Radical Plot is an ecological archive of wild plants growing in the artwork Crocosmia × (2018), located on the margin of the front lawn of IMMA – a plot that was planted entirely of Crocosmia × crocosmiiflora in 2018. Crocosmia × is an outcome of my ongoing collaboration with individuals seeking asylum that began in 2015 in the garden of Spirasi (Spiritan Asylum Services Initiative) – the national centre for the rehabilitation of survivors of torture in Ireland. The garden set the foundations for the project, giving us a shared sense of purpose and a physical space to connect with each other and the natural world, offering meaning, and inspiring our collaboration.

While gardening, we found a gnarled corm of a crocosmia × crocosmiiflora – more commonly known as Montbretia, and found along hedgerows in Ireland. Although many assume this to be a native plant, it is a hybrid from South Africa. This vibrant orange flower offered a symbol of hope for members of the group who had themselves been uprooted; forced to leave their homeland and create a new life in a foreign land. Crocosmia × became our metaphor that questioned received notions of what is ‘native’ and what is ‘foreign’. Their flourishing in Ireland champions our conception of community, centring on relations formed across categories of nation, race and culture. Support from Janice Hough (Artists’ Residency Programme Co-ordinator at IMMA) and Mary Condon (Head Gardener at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham / IMMA) ensured our access to the nursery at RHK, to grow and nurture specimens for the artworks in IMMA and TU Dublin (commissioned as part of the Grangegorman public art programme, ‘…the lives we live’, curated by Jenny Haughton). This had an immense impact on the project and this beautiful outdoor workspace became our place.

My residency in IMMA as part of ‘A Radical Plot’ ( July 2021 – March 2022) allowed me to re-engage with Crocosmia ×, giving me time to observe and reflect on what we did not foresee – the quiet evolution of this artwork. Its status ensures that it has not been tampered with, allowing the natural process of self-seeding. Reflections on A Radical Plot witnesses the transformation of this artwork into a valuable ecosystem of significant and distinct plant species, offering a further reminder that diversity is the natural state of being.

The companion prints in the archive include nettle, forget me knot, primrose, herb Robert, plantain, nipplewort, prickly sow thistle, poppy, wild violet, and western willow herb. This ecological form of printmaking is not reliant on technical expertise but on the composition of the plant itself. This unpredictable process draws the natural essence from the plant and ‘saddens’ it onto paper. The resulting image is the trace of the plant. In archiving a continuously evolving artwork, Reflections on A Radical Plot acknowledges the potency and complexity of both nature and art as entangled and un-ending processes. Clodagh Emoe is an artist and parttime lecturer at IADT. Recent projects include Classroom in the Sun (2022), an inter-generational, collaborative, Arts Council-funded project that addresses urgent issues of our biodiversity crisis by supporting a community to connect with nature and realise their ambition to design and create an outdoor space for learning, exploration and connection. Clodagh is currently developing Seed STUDIO, an ecological studio space piloted by IMMA, that addresses an overwhelming need to explore, deepen and celebrate our connection with the natural world.

clodaghemoe.com

Clodagh Emoe, Primrose (Primula vulgaris), 2022, ecological print on cotton paper; image courtesy of the artist.

Chronic Collective

TARA CARROLL AND ÁINE O’HARA DISCUSS THEIR MULTIDISCIPLINARY ART COLLECTIVE AND THEIR ADVOCACY FOR IMPROVED ACCESSIBILITY IN THE ARTS.

WE ARE TWO best friends, Tara Carroll and Áine O’Hara, who connected over our love of performance art more than ten years ago. Now our bond strengthens over our shared chronic illnesses and the immense care we provide each other, in order to survive. We’ve subconsciously created a care web. Explained by queer disabled femme writer and activist, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, a care web is when a group of disabled people work together to provide care and access to resources to support each other.

The pandemic’s disruption of societal stasis and the barriers we and our peers collectively face in the arts more broadly, made it even more apparent that our collective (previously called 4D Space) needed to evolve. We wanted to expand our care web in the best way we knew how, through art, knowledge sharing, creating spaces and nurturing relationships.

We are now known as Chronic Collective, a multidisciplinary curatorial art collective with a strong focus on accessibility in the arts. As two queer and disabled/ chronically ill artists, we strive to create opportunities to platform disabled and/or chronically ill artists’ work in a supportive and care-focused environment, catering to individual needs with a view to alleviating some of the barriers faced when creating and exhibiting work.

This summer we curated a programme of events and workshops about the body, illness, and accessibility at Pallas Projects. All events were active sites of learning and practice about access. It was supported by the Capacity Building Award 2022 from the Arts Council. All events and workshops were designed to have a slower pace, flexible timing, and plenty of breaks. We provided a quiet low light rest area, comfortable seating, masks, ventilation and free snacks and water. Many of our events were hybrid with Irish Sign Language (ISL) and live captioning.

We designed a series of performance art workshops and events which supported the work of 15 disabled and/or chronically ill artists and nurtured connections within their community. We supported these artists by asking them what their needs are – a question many told us they had never been asked before – which we accommodated to the best of our abilities. We did this because we saw a glaring gap in accessibility in the visual arts and the arts in Ireland generally. We wanted to give disabled, chronically ill and neurodiverse artists and audiences an accessible space that was made by us for us.

What does accessibility mean to us? In Ireland conversations around accessibility in the arts, and accessibility in general, have been very limited. When asking about how accessible an event or venue is, we have often been simply told a space is

‘not accessible’. We assume when this is the answer that they mean a space is not wheelchair accessible. We cannot cater to every individual’s access needs at once, but access for us is a lot more than a ramp into a building, though we want those too!

Information is power for us. Is your event seated? What kind of seats? Will there be captioning or ISL? Is your event relaxed, can I leave and come back, can I make noise, can I be on my phone? Do you require masks? Will the event be available to watch online? If there are steps into the building, how many? On a good day I could climb a flight of stairs, on a bad day I might be able to do one step, but I can’t make an informed decision if you don’t give me the information.

Make your information available and easy to find on your website. We know that no space or event is fully accessible, so there is no need to shamefully shy away from highlighting what is and isn’t available. It is good practice to include access costs in your budget to develop your programmes with access in mind from the beginning.

In 2011, writer and disability justice activist Mia Mingus, in her blog Leaving Evidence, described “access intimacy” as an “elusive, hard to describe feeling when someone else gets your access needs” and a sense of “comfort that your disabled self feels” (leavingevidence.wordpress.com). This is what we are striving for in our work and in our personal lives. Access intimacy can be given or received by anyone, disabled or not.

Access intimacy builds connection; it often doesn’t mean that an event or exhibition is 100% accessible but that everyone involved is trying as hard as possible to ensure accessibility for as many people as possible. We encourage you to work with us as a community when you are developing your access plans and creating events, exhibitions and workshops. There are as many different access needs as there are artists or audience members. We will continue to create spaces for our community to take part in the arts.

Tara Carroll is a multidisciplinary artist, curator and facilitator and Áine O’Hara is a multidisciplinary artist, designer and theatre maker.

@chronicartcollective chronicartcollective@gmail.com

Oh Infamy

IARLAITH NI FHEORAIS DISCUSSES A NEW FILM MADE IN COLLABORATION WITH EMMA WOLF-HAUGH.

OH – INFAMY – WE eat electric light (2022) is a new film by Emma Wolf-Haugh and I, which will be launched at Oonagh Young Gallery on 3 November. The film was co-commissioned by ANU, Landmark Productions, and the Museum of Literature (MoLI) in partnership with Arts and Disability Ireland (ADI). The commission forms part of Ulysses 2.2 – a year-long programme marking the centenary of the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses, through 18 multidisciplinary projects, including film, poetry, music, theatre, writing, architecture, and visual art, presented in various venues across Ireland throughout 2022.

Our fellow practitioners are Adrian Crowley, Anne Enright, Branar, David Bolger of CoisCéim, Emilie Pine, Emma Martin of United Fall, Evangelia Rigaki, Fehdah, Fintan O’Toole, God Knows, Harry Clifton, Louise Lowe, Marina Carr, Matthew Nolan, Molly Twomey, Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe, Owen Boss, Paula Meehan, Sinéad Burke, The Domestic Godless, and Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Grafton Architects. Each practitioner was matched with one of the 18 episodes of Ulysses to respond to in their own way. Emma and I were given Episode 15, ‘Circe’, which follows the protagonist Bloom on a night-time hallucinatory adventure through Dublin’s Monto.

Emma has made critical and playful work inspecting the legacy of modernism in Ireland, most recently the legacy of Eileen Gray in the film Domestic Optimism (2021), shown at Project Arts Centre last year. Oh – Infamy – we eat eclectic light emerged from a series of conversations between Emma and I about how we wanted to treat this material that has come to be held in such high regard as an artefact of national significance and symbol of high Irish literature. Adopting a disobedient position, aimed at undoing the sanctity that’s been constructed around the text, we proceeded with a close reading – a first for both of us. This revealed an unexpected tale of nocturnal lives, animism, justice, sex work, kink, and gender-swapping, raising new questions of this work’s relevance to contemporary Dublin. This included a section, which came to be the central focus of the film, in which Bloom swaps gender with a dominatrix in a BDSM session. Alongside this unforeseen depiction of sexuality for the time, ‘Circe’ holds an image of the Monto and of Dublin that many today would not recognise.

Reflecting the history of the Monto drew our attention to the ecstasy, chaos, mysticism, revelations, and the labour of the night. We considered how the liberatory potential of some of these activities has been extinguished in Dublin over the last 15 years; how nightclubs and independent spaces, especially for queers, have given way to fancy restaurants and wine bars, thereby sanitising Dublin’s nocturnal streets. The

central scene of the film is a party set in basement, with friends as guests and Bé as DJ. Filmed in August by Helio León, the film also includes Emma and I as spectral visions of James Joyce and Nora Barnacles in drag, transformed with makeup by Lorcan Devaney. Unseen by the partygoers, we perform mainly as a pair, acting in improvised tableaux while moving slowly through the space, our mouths illuminated.

The film is overlaid with text, spoken by three object characters – an eye, a rubber fist, and a snake – holding a parallel conversation alongside and against the words of Joyce. The script was largely based on ‘Circe’, redeveloped through a writing exercise. We focused on language describing liquids, and the quite ableist descriptions of nameless disabled characters in the beginning of the episode. Through this technique, it was possible to begin unpicking the troubling and slippery language.

Oh Infamy was made possible by a wonderful team. Ulysses 2.2 Project Manager Gráinne Pollak worked with us through planning and production, supporting with finance, communications, building relationships, and even acting as bouncer on the door of the party! Ulysses 2.2 Production Manager Stephen Bourke, substituted by Tomás Fitzgerald for filming, played an essential role, arranging equipment, supporting installation, and also acting as bouncer. Oonagh Young provided invaluable insight into ‘Circe’ and the history of the Monto, and graciously hosted a party, a film set, and an exhibition. ADI’s Access Services Coordinator, Aidan Gately, and Executive Director, Pádraig Naughton, worked closely with us in providing access and support through planning and production. This included how to host an accessible party and film shoot, whilst supporting captioning and audio description work. We hope that the film is a generous ode to the Dublin night – to the people who find solace in it, the spaces we’ve lost, and those that made them.

Iarlaith Ni Fheorais (she/her) is a curator and writer based between Ireland and the UK.

@iarlaith_nifheorais

Iarlaith Ni Fheorais and Emma Wolf-Haugh, Oh – Infamy – we eat electric light, 2022; image courtesy the artists.

Making Change Happen

DR SUHA SHAKKOUR AND JENNIFER LAWLESS OUTLINE THE ARTS COUNCIL’S EQUALITY, DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION (EDI) TOOLKIT.

AT THE CENTRE of the Arts Council’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policy and Strategy, launched in 2019, was the firm belief that everyone who lives in Ireland should have the opportunity to create, engage with, enjoy and participate in the arts. In other words, that access to the arts is a basic human right, regardless of a person’s age, civil or family status, disability, gender, membership of the Traveller Community, race, religion, sexual orientation, or socio-economic background.

While the policy commits to ensuring the inclusion of all voices and cultures that make up Ireland today, it also acknowledges that barriers continue to exclude individuals and communities from full participation and representation in the arts. Additionally, in the almost four years since the policy was published, it has become increasingly clear that these barriers are further compounded when considered from an intersectional perspective, where multiple factors combine to amplify exclusion from the arts.

The Arts Council is committed to continuing to identify and dismantle these barriers, and to support organisations seeking to do the same, all of which will ultimately lead to a more diverse and inclusive arts sector for artists, arts workers, audiences, and participants. The Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Toolkit, developed in consultation with the sector, was published earlier this year (artscouncil.ie). It is a direct action of the EDI Policy’s Action Plan, intended to support organisations in addressing these barriers and in building policies and action plans of their own.

The EDI Toolkit is a practical, working resource that guides organisations through a series of questionnaires, in order to:

• Take stock of where they are currently in relation to EDI practice

• Identify what they want to achieve

• Outline how they can reach their goals

In designing the templates and tools provided, we acknowledge that every organisation is unique, and so these templates can be adapted according to each organisation’s needs and the stage they are at in the journey to embed EDI in their work. The EDI Toolkit takes a reflective approach and encourages organisations to view policy development as a continuous practice, rather than an end in itself.

The first step in the process asks organisations to consider their strengths and areas for improvement. This helps to build a picture of what the organisation has achieved to date and identify any areas that require intervention. This could involve, for example, looking at an organisation’s staff, decision makers and board members, to determine if they are representative of Ireland’s diversity. A resulting action could be to update hiring and selection policies to ensure current practices are not intentionally,

or unintentionally, exclusionary.

The Toolkit’s Artist Engagement and Audience Engagement self-audit questionnaires ask organisations to consider the artists they employ or commission, as well as the audiences or participants they attract, and ask: Is our organisation welcoming and accessible to all? Do we have clear goals and a clear vision of how we can improve inclusion and diversity for the artists we employ and the audiences or participants we programme for?

Providing a platform for direct consultation with the individuals and communities whose voices, experiences and needs are not being heard, is essential to creating real and lasting change through the policy and action plans developed.

The insights gathered from the evaluation and consultation process will inform the policy development and associated action points. It will further enable organisations to prioritise their objectives, outline the resources required, and identify the timeline for delivery of their goals. One of the key elements in achieving these objectives is to adopt a process of continuous monitoring and evaluation with clear lines of accountability and ownership of tasks, in order to keep track of progress and adapt and respond to changing priorities.

The EDI Toolkit also features a number of case studies from organisations in the sector. Each case study shares the steps the organisations have taken and are planning to take. They highlight the difference this has made to the organisations to date, and the most important learnings they have encountered on their EDI journeys thus far.

A common thread running through all of the featured cases studies is an openness to challenging how things are currently done, and an understanding of the need for continuous and honest reflection, adaption and change. We hope they will inspire and encourage you on your own path, and we invite you to collaborate and to share knowledge and good practice with each other as we work towards eliminating discrimination in the arts.

When we make policies and develop action plans – when we curate, produce, commission, fund and programme, with and for the full diversity of Ireland – the arts reflected back at us are all the richer and more vibrant for it. But we cannot expect change to happen organically and of its own accord. Inclusion is active and responsive and deliberate. We all play a role in making change happen.

Dr Suha Shakkour is Arts Council Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. Jennifer Lawless is Arts Council Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Projects Officer.

artscouncil.ie

Reflections on Making

PAULINE KEENA DISCUSSES HER RECENT RESIDENCY AT BACKWATER ARTISTS GROUP.

LIKE MOST ARTISTS during lockdown, I spent two years working in isolation. In winter, my rural studio is freezing and almost impossible to heat, so I was delighted to be awarded a two-week research residency in Studio 12 at the Backwater Artists Group in Cork City. Backwater Artists Group was founded in 1990 and is a key fixture in Cork’s cultural landscape. It is one of the largest and longest running artist-led initiatives in the country, which currently provides access to facilities and developmental support for 64 artists.

Positioned in the heart of the city, the mission of Backwater Artists Group is to support and advocate for visual artists, enabling them to thrive at all stages of their careers, and empowering them to foster a deep appreciation and enthusiasm for the visual arts within society. Facilities include 28 studio spaces, a fully functioning dark room, an exhibition/project space (Studio 12), a computer meeting room, and woodwork facilities. The premises is shared with Cork Printmakers and The Lavit Gallery.

BAN (Backwater Artists Network) was set up in 2019 to create a shared city-centre focal point, as well as opportunities to connect for professional artists working in isolation in home studios, or in privately rented studios. I became a member of BAN just before lockdown, as I wanted to be part of a bigger network of professionals to exchange ideas and develop new work. BAN supports artists through the provision of opportunities to sustain and develop artistic practice, including networking, exhibition and residency opportunities, learning and discursive events, peer to peer critique sessions, a visiting curator programme, and more.

Studio 12 operates both as a site of experimentation and exhibition, and as a public testing ground for new artworks and ideas. During my residency at Studio 12, I wanted to reengage with my drawing practice as part of a larger body of new work. Having spent a long period of time in my studio engaged in the painstaking task of stitching a large-scale and very heavy tapestry, my drawing practice had been neglected. So, I was delighted to have this large bright warm space on the first floor of the Backwater building in which to start drawing again. Although the studio is very private, there are artists all over the building and we could meet during breaks in the communal kitchen area. It felt so strange and wonderful to be meeting people in reality and not on Zoom.

I wanted to develop a series of new drawings based on the failing body, by focusing on the skin as a porous boundary. Of course, drawing confronts me with many challenges and questions, including: how do ideas manifest through the corporeal intimacy of materials? I wonder whether I draw because I find out something that isn’t available through other strands of artmaking. For

me, drawing is like a location; a commotion of place, where seeing becomes possible in a way that’s not available through other means. Drawing provides me with a very particular way of engaging with the work and seems to extend my knowledge by finding things out through the physicality of the process. This encompasses the fragility of the watercolours, the bold heavy lines, and coming to know something as I proceed – perhaps forgetting and remembering it again, when I observe what has happened in the process.

Connecting with other artists was a valuable part of the residency as well. One day there was a knock on my studio door and another artist was there wanting to visit and see what I was doing. Sean Hanrahan had recently finished a residency at IMMA in Dublin, where he created a project entitled ‘Flag Anthem’. We chatted about his work, the flag, what a flag may mean, what it represents, and what a country could be. We spoke about the importance of residencies for artists and the value of having space and time to think about the work. With a twoweek stay, there is no expectation to produce finished work; however, the value is in the space and time to think about it. I managed to establish a new body of work that is at a reasonable stage and can be developed further in my own studio.

Finally, I had the opportunity to talk about the project. Several studio artists attended, and following my talk and film screening, a robust discussion took place, mostly focusing on our individual practices, and the ways in which thinking develops through both making and reflection on making. I was very impacted by how artists are truly valued in Backwater Studios and how the ongoing development of their work is central to the ethos of the organisation – something that is largely due to the incredible work of the current director, Elaine Coakley.

Pauline Keena is an artist who is interested in the human form, in terms of its physicality, its power, its chaos and interiority. The Backwater Artists Group is funded by The Arts Council and Cork City Council.

backwaterartists.ie