Nicole Wermers, Marathon Dance Relief at St Carthage Hall, Lismore, March 2025. Install view by Jed Niezgoda, courtesy the artist and Herald St.
The Mill
Laura Fitzgerald
14 June - 10 August 2025
Lismore Castle Lismore Co Waterford, P51 F859
St Carthage Hall Chapel Street, Lismore Co Waterford, P51 WV96
The Mill Ballyin, Lismore Co Waterford, P51 A2R5
For opening times of each location www.lismorecastlearts.ie +353 (0)58 54061
Lismore Castle Arts: Celebrating 20 years 2005 - 2025
St Carthage Hall
14 June - 10 August 2025
Ailbhe Ní Bhriain
St Carthage Hall
Marathon Dance Relief 22 March - 25 May 2025
Nicole Wermers
Lismore Castle
Aurél, Monster Chetwynd, Dorothy Cross, Urs Fischer, Marie Foley, John Gerrard, Graham Gingles, John Kindness, Sarah Lucas, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Alice Maher, Ed Miliano, Patrick O’Reilly, Peter Pearson, Edward Rollitt, Conrad Shawcross, Sasha Sykes, Joseph Walsh Curated by Robert O’Byrne 22 March - 26 October 2025
Kunstkammer
Exhibitions across 3 locations:
Lismore Castle Arts Summer 2025
The Visual Artists’ News Sheet
VAN
Issue 3: May – June 2025
A Visual Artists Ireland Publication
Inside This Issue
MEMBER: DAPHNE WRIGHT EXHIBITION: MICHAEL KANE BIENNIAL: EVA PLATFORM COLUMN: LILY VAN OOST
The Visual Artists’ News Sheet May – June 2025
On The Cover
Tom Climent, Helios [detail], 2018, oil, plaster, and sand on canvas, 153 x 183 cm; photograph by Jörg Köster, courtesy of the artist and Solomon Fine Art.
6. 9.
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Page 24
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12. 14. 15.
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19. 20. 22. 23. 24. 26. Page 32
30. 32. 33.
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35. 36.
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First Pages
Roundup. Exhibitions and events from the past two months.
Columns
Old Records. Cornelius Browne revisits a series of paintings chronicled in his diary as a young artist. Lily of the Valley. Michael Holly outlines his research on the life and work of Belgian artist Lily Van Oost. NCAD Student Protest. A column by Áine Phillips, first published in the SSI Newsletter in 1989, outlines a protest by NCAD Students Union about severe cuts to arts education. Courting Inspiration. Aoibheann Greenan discusses the root of creative ideas and how artists can cultivate them. Crisis /Death /Resurrection. Jane Humphries reports on an MTU painting symposium held at Triskel Arts Centre in March. Archiving Oneself. Eve Parnell outlines some advice for artists on how to organise their personal archives.
Member Profile
The Visual Artists’ News Sheet:
Deep-Rooted Things. Joanne Laws interviews Daphne Wright ahead of her solo exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Sonic Hauntings. Joseph Young outlines recent doctoral research outputs including a sound trail and vinyl record. État Sauvage. Tom Climent outlines the evolution of his painting practice and his recent exhibition at CCI Paris.
Editor: Joanne Laws Production/Design: Thomas Pool News/Opportunities: Thomas Pool, Mary McGrath Proofreading: Paul Dunne
Festival / Biennial
Maria Fusco and Margaret Salmon, ‘History of the Present’, installation view, Golden Thread Gallery. ‘Kunstkammer’ at Lismore Castle Arts ‘History of the Present’ at Golden Thread Gallery ‘The Shape of Memory’ at Graphic Studio Gallery Daniel Tuomey at Ormston House Rich Gilligan at Draíocht Arts Centre
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 Impact Measurement: Rob Hilken Shared Island Advocacy: Brian Kielt
Exhibition Profile
Board of Directors:
Inclusion & Sociality. Thomas Pool interviews the EVA Platform Commission Artists about their current research.
Critique
On Television, Beckett. Antonia Held reviews a recent exhibition at Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart in Germany. An Urban Atmosphere. Josephine Kelliher reflects on the practice of Michael Kane. Problems of To-day. Leah Corbett discusses her artwork, recently presented at CCA Derry~Londonderry. Pliable Planes. Emily Waszak outlines her participation in ‘Urgencies’ at CCA Derry~Londonderry.
Organisation Profile
PhotoIreland. Ángel Luis González and Julia Gelezova announce the International Centre for the Image.
VAI Events
Mapping Stories. Marianne O’Kane Boal outlines a recent mentorship programme for ten Mayo-based artists. Screenings at The Curve. Venus Patel reports on a screening event by Irish Artists’ Film Index at VAI headquarters.
Last Pages
VAI Lifelong Learning. Upcoming VAI Helpdesks, cafés, and webinars happening nationwide over the next two months.
Page 36 Principal Funders
Page 31
International Memberships
Visual Artists Ireland:
Deborah Crowley, Michael Fitzpatrick (Chair), Lorelei Harris, Maeve Jennings, Gina O’Kelly, Deirdre O’Mahony (Secretary), Samir Mahmood, Paul Moore, Ben Readman. 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 Safe to Create Safe to Create is a Dignity at Work programme looking to impact change on the culture and practices of the Arts and Creative sectors. If you or someone you know is facing bullying or harrasment please visit safetocreate.ie
SAVE THE DATE: GET TOGETHER 2025 Connect, collaborate, and celebrate creativity at this year’s VAI Get Together, dedicated to discussion around materials and methods. Featuring clinics, networking, info desks, speed-curating, and a chance to catch up with friends old and new. Get Together 2025 will feature a second date (16 September 2025) online, dedicated to engaging artists, directors, curators, and programmers in a conference on Collaborative Innovation, Thought Leadership, and Future-focused Programming.
Through Line Paul Bokslag 10.05— 20.07.25 butlergallery.ie +353 (0)56 7761106
Evans’ Home, John’s Quay Kilkenny, R95 YX3F
Paul Bokslag. Resonance, 2015, Papercut Installation, 6 × 320 × 100cm (detail)
8 SEPTEMBER 2025 | TU DUBLIN
KITH & KIN
The Quilts of Gee’s Bend Explore this stunning collection of textile works made by a group of African American women with a 200-year tradition of storytelling through quilt making,
Until 27 October 2025 Admission free, visit imma.ie IMAGE: Installation view Kith & Kin: The Quilts of Gee’s Bend, at IMMA, Dublin, 2025. Photo Ros Kavanagh.
Fingal, A Place for Art
Fingal County Council, Tyrone Guthrie Centre, and Age & Opportunity Residency Award 2025 Fingal County Council, in association with Tyrone Guthrie Centre and Age & Opportunity, are offering two, 1-month-long residencies at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre. These residences aim to celebrate and support older artists at all stages of their careers working in Literature and Visual Arts. To be eligible to apply, applicants must: have been born, have studied, or currently reside in the Fingal administrative area.
www.fingalarts.ie www.fingal.ie/arts
Closing date for applications is Monday 9th June 2025 at 4.00pm To apply and find out more, visit: www.bealtaine.ie For further information email: arts@ageandopportunity.ie
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Visual Artists’ News Sheet | May – June 2025
Exhibition Roundup
Dublin
Belfast
Hillsboro Fine Art !e group exhibition, ‘!e 1980s: a return to painting’, runs until 30 May, featuring works by Michael Cullen, Joe Hanly, Eithne Jordan, Michael Kane, Michael Mulcahy, and Gwen O’Dowd. !e 1980s marked a huge resurgence of figurative painting, following a period focused on performance and conceptual art. !is new, dynamic approach to painting developed almost simultaneously in multiple countries, appearing to offer a critical examination of the painting tradition, while reflecting the enormous societal and cultural shifts of the period.
Molesworth Gallery ‘To the Harbour Place’ by Brian Harte, which ran from 13 March to 11 April, is his first in Ireland since establishing himself internationally. Known for large-scale canvases that hover between abstraction and figuration, Harte creates deconstructed interiors that hold traces of his domestic life. Household items, such as table lamps, chairs, or framed pictures, crystallise and dissolve in each work alongside the occasional indiscernible figure. Harte will also exhibit at the Butler Gallery in November.
Catalyst Arts ‘Operation Transformation’ by Finn Nichol, ran from 3 April to 1 May. ‘Operation Transformation’ embodies the spirits of neoliberal Ireland, enacting strange, solitary rituals that connect mythological transformation to Ireland’s evolving relationship with capitalism and colonial anxiety. !e installation presents a video piece and drawings. Conceptual elements are autobiographically integrated, grounding personal histories of chronic illness and economic instability within a broader historical framework.
hillsborofineart.com
molesworthgallery.com
catalystarts.org.uk
Cultúrlann Mc Adam Ó Fiaich ‘Otherworld Trouble’ was an exhibition by Dervla O’Flaherty from 30 January to 13 March. !e artist’s mixed-media paintings draw from her interest in the unknown and the unconscious, exploring access points and entrances in myth and memory, while building a visual lexicon of abstraction. O’Flaherty’s source material was gathered during recent travels and consolidated in Ireland. !ese works contemplate the allure and peril of venturing beyond the known into ‘!e Otherworld’, whatever that concept may mean to the individual.
Oliver Sears Gallery Amelia Stein’s ‘Kyoto Garden: !e Impermanence of Being’ ran from 5 March – 30 April. Japanese Gardens have had a longheld fascination for Stein, and this series of 11 photographs (Archival Pigment Prints on Bamboo paper) documents the constructed Temple Garden landscapes in Kyoto. Feelings of timelessness and otherness are conjured within these enclosed, reimagined landscapes, as the quantities and structure of the maintained Japanese Garden, a mirror of nature, are revealed to the viewer.
Taylor Galleries Taylor Galleries presented Diarmuid Breen’s latest solo exhibition, ‘Give Me My Meaning’ (21 March – 12 April), featuring a series of figurative oil paintings that delve into the complexity of modern life, exploring themes of work, identity, and the search for happiness. !e exhibition examines the role that work plays in contemporary society, using evocative imagery, sourced from old books and photographs, which imbue the paintings with a sense of nostalgia, while capturing the strangeness and fleeting nature of our everyday existence.
PS² Sian Costello’s solo exhibition, ‘!e Crush’ (13 March – 17 April) was a “show about obsession.” !e history of figuration can be seen as the capture, copy, and control of reality, through images of women, land, and fruit, leashed down onto the canvas and sealed in varnish. Rooted in art-historical references, ‘!e Crush’ presented a new series of paintings and an installation of large-scale camera obscuras, examining the desire for likeness in figuration, and the classical ideal of creating the illusion of space upon a flat surface.
Ulster University Art Gallery Majella Clancy’s ‘Matter Out of Place’ (6 March – 10 April), takes its title from Lauren Elkin’s book, Art Monsters, in which the female body is described as “always matter out of place” through its refusal to conform to perceived notions of femininity. !e materiality of making is held within the work, where references to stage-sets or performed spaces are played out. Paper stencils, integral to the making of her screenprints, are reused as collage within the paintings, creating a visual language that is ambiguous, tactile, and fluid.
The HORSE From 13 March to 11 April, !e HORSE presented the group exhibition ‘Many have eyes, but cannot see’. Curated by Stephen Burke, the show considered how one might navigate and respond to rapid contemporary shifts in technology, government policies, and urban development that are reshaping daily life. It featured artworks by Brad Downey, Joy Gerrard, Hans Leo Maes, Colin Martin, Sean O’Rourke, Peter Moloney and Stephen Burke, across a range of media, including painting, photography, and video intervention.
The Complex From 3 to 6 April, !e Complex presented an exhibition by the MACRO Senior Citizens Painting Group, featuring works by Mary Doyle, Michael Dignam, Olive Hartnett, Michael Maher, Valerie Moore, Ann Murray, and Jacinta Harris. Visual artist Sibyl Montague has facilitated the group’s weekly painting class for over six years, building a strong relationship with the members. Most grew up in inner-city Dublin and took up painting during retirement, with many members painting together for nearly a decade, and some practicing for up to 20 years.
University of Atypical ‘Shedding Light’ at University of Atypical (6 March – 25 April) was a solo exhibition by Bangor-based artist, Steph Harrison. !e artist’s experimental approach to printmaking involves a range of technical and conceptual processes: working and reworking, embracing the imperfections, and accepting the outcomes. !e artist feels that every work is tangible, unique, and human: prints leave traces, no two are the same, and we are not the same as we were before. Monoprinting, in particular, offers Hamilton a way of letting go of control.
Vault Artist Studios ‘CAILLEACH’ (6 – 12 March) was a group exhibition curated by Zippy, Wee Nuls, and Kerrie Hanna, in celebration of International Women’s Day 2025. !e word ‘Cailleach’ translates as old woman or the divine hag. !e Cailleach is considered mysterious, powerful, and often a shapeshifter, who was celebrated as winter gives way to spring. !e exhibition honoured the deep ancestral knowledge that permeates generations of women, while also acting as a stark reminder of the ongoing fight for women’s rights and the progress still needed to achieve true gender parity.
oliversearsgallery.com
thehorsedublin.xyz
Diarmuid Breen, Last Days of Summer, 2025, oil on canvas, 25 x 20 cm; image courtesy of the artist and Taylor Galleries.
taylorgalleries.ie
thecomplex.ie
pssquared.org
universityofatypical.org
Sian Costello, ‘The Crush’, installation view, PS²; photograph by Catherine Devlin, courtesy of the artist and PS².
culturlann.ie
ulster.ac.uk
vaultartiststudios.com
Majella Clancy ‘Matter Out of Place’, installation view, Ulster University Gallery; photograph courtesy of the artist and Ulster University Gallery.
Visual Artists’ News Sheet | May – June 2025
Exhibition Roundup
Barbara Knežević, Gvozdene Kapije (The Iron Gates), 2025, single-channel film, 46 mins; film still courtesy of the artist and Solstice Arts Centre.
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Christine Mackey, ‘Seeking to walk beautifully on the earth’, installation view, The Model; photograph courtesy of the artist and The Model.
Regional & International
An Chéad Tine Art Gallery Curated by Mary Doyle Burke, ‘!e Kilkenny Portrait Show 2025’ ran at An Chéad Tine from 29 March to 26 April. According to the press release, this showcase of contemporary Irish portraiture featured over 80 artworks that “capture the essence and diversity of human expression.” !e artworks were selected through an open submission process by Kilkenny-based artist Bernadette Kiely, who also selected the overall winner. A €1,000 prize for Best Portrait was awarded to Anita Conway for Contemplative Gaze. an-chead-tine.com
Áras Éanna ‘Athluchtú / Recharge’, by Anna Macleod, continues until 9 May. Macleod’s ongoing, site-responsive project, ‘Water Conversations’ resonates on the island of Inis Oírr, where fresh groundwater flows below the landscape. Without mainland water infrastructure, islanders have historically carried out rainwater harvesting. To celebrate this legacy of self-su(ciency, Macleod has developed rainwater harvesting solutions (that also act as pollination enhancers) and she will gift a handmade flag to the island community as the exhibition ends. aras-eanna.ie
Butler Gallery ‘Siren’ – an expansive exhibition of new work by Ursula Burke, ran from 22 February to 27 April, having been first presented at Highlanes Gallery in 2024. ‘Siren’ incorporates various works in ceramic and textiles, as well as a Greco-Roman-inspired surrealist sculpture, and a new monumental tapestry work. Burke creates an “open system of correspondence between antiquity and modernity,” introducing broader poetic and political frames around the “dysfunctional relations of trauma and violence that have qualified the building of empires.” butlergallery.ie
Lavit Gallery ‘Lady Lazarus’ (3 Apr – 3 May) is the first solo exhibition of emerging artist, Lara Quinn – recipient of the 2024 Cork Arts Society Student of the Year Award, sponsored by Baker Tilly Accountants. Initiated in 1967, the annual award is given to MTU graduates. Quinn’s practice is rooted in figurative oil painting, while sculpture and performance are recent developments. Imagining the vaults as a tomb or lair, Quinn made connections with Oweynagat Cave (Uaimh na gCat) – a subterranean site within pre-Christian Irish folklore.
Mermaid Arts Centre A solo exhibition by Judy Carroll Deeley, titled ‘Mine Lands: Glendalough & Glendasan’ (22 February – 10 May 2025) continues the artist’s exploration of post-extractive landscapes, researching the impact of industrial activity on the land. !rough her oil paintings and drawings, Carroll Deeley examines the historical, religious, and industrial heritage of the Glendalough and Glendasan valleys, painting what she terms ‘popular scenes’, where evidence of historic mining coexists with our preconceptions of Wild Wicklow. mermaidartscentre.ie
Regional Cultural Centre ‘Prototypes for Cyborgs – A Space Opera’ (12 April – 14 June) is an immersive exhibition by artist Mark Cullen, developed in collaboration with Tadhg Kinsella (Sound artist), Tadhg Ó Cuirín (Digital modelling), Paul Green (Interactive technology designer), and Mick Murray (Lighting designer). !e exhibition transforms the gallery into a hybrid landscape of playable sculptures, video works, Virtual Reality and interactive installations – a speculative zone where transhumanist dreams and posthumanist critiques ritualistically clash. regionalculturalcentre.com
Solstice Arts Centre ‘Gvozdene Kapije (!e Iron Gates)’ is an exhibition of new sculpture and a film by Barbara Kne&ević, commissioned by Solstice Arts Centre and supported by the Arts Council of Ireland. !e exhibition interprets the history, stories, materiality, and the development of technology in Gvozdene Kapije (!e Iron Gates) region on the border of Serbia and Romania. !e exhibition continues at Solstice Arts Centre until 30 May and will be presented at SIRIUS on 4 October as part of a nationwide tour. solsticeartscentre.ie
South Tipperary Arts Centre ‘I will not flower’ (1 March – 17 April) was an installation of painting and sound by Sarah Long that considered the rich mythological and allegorical qualities of the fern plant. It forms part of larger project, ‘Death & Dreams’ – a work of autofiction, encompassing painting, performance, sound, moving image, and long form text, which engages with the Mother Ireland figure and repressed feminine archetypes. Long’s practice explores concepts of landscape as a receptacle of human ideas, where nature and allegory are intrinsically intertwined.
The Hunt Museum !e Hunt Museum launched the Hunt Contemporary Art Programme with a solo exhibition by Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh, which ran from 6 March to 3 April. Titled ‘Bailiúchán’ (meaning ‘collection’), the exhibition assembled paintings from distinct bodies of work, created over the past five years, exploring themes of cartography and deep mapping. A fluent Irish speaker, Ní Mhaonaigh often titles her exhibitions with singular Irish words as a device to examine aspects of her identity, environment, and lived experience.
The Linenhall Arts Centre ‘Harbour’ is a solo exhibition by Sharon Kelly that launched at !e Linenhall on 11 April and continues until 17 May. Inspired by research into personal family history from County Mayo, Kelly’s new body of work contemplates what lies hidden or undetected and how this might shape our sense of self and connection to the world. Utilising the materiality of worn clothing, sewing patterns, and other fragile media, Kelly links themes of intimacy, emotional weight and burden, particularly from the female perspective and experience.
The Model Christine Mackey’s exhibition, ‘Seeking to walk beautifully on the earth’, ran from 4 February to 22 March. Mackey’s artistic practice is one of profound stewardship, observation and care for the environment, and is deeply rooted in site-specific work. !e exhibition was accompanied by workshops offering the public opportunities to explore various concepts and techniques – from mycology, weaving, and natural pigments, to storytelling and illustration – thereby highlighting positive themes of renewal, awareness, and change.
The Source Arts Centre Enda Bowe’s award-winning photographic series, ‘Love’s Fire Song’ was presented in !urles from 15 March to 19 April. Over five years, Bowe worked with young people on either side of the peace walls in Northern Ireland. Taking the symbolic bonfires of the 12 July as his starting point, Bowe worked collaboratively with people from both sides of the sectarian divide. Bowe’s deeply empathetic portraits go beyond binary classifications to consider participation in bonfire culture as a continuum of the ancient ritual of gathering around a fire.
huntmuseum.com
thelinenhall.com
themodel.ie
lavitgallery.com
southtippartscentre.ie
thesourceartscentre.ie
Fingal, A Place for Art
Fingal County Council and Graphic Studio Dublin Fine Art Print Residency Award 2025 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 and work with a master printer maker. To be eligible to apply, applicants must: have been born, have studied, or currently reside in the Fingal administrative area.
www.fingalarts.ie www.fingal.ie/arts
Closing date for applications is Monday 16th June 2025 at 4.00pm To apply and find out more, visit: www.graphicstudiodublin.com For further information email: info@graphicstudiodublin.com
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MA in Contemporary Art Practice
17/04/2025 21:19
MTU Crawford College of Art and Design, Cork City, Ireland.
The MA in Contemporary Art Practice offers the opportunity to undertake a deepening of individual research through a trans-disciplinary approach within a supportive and engaged peer environment. This MA programme critically interrogates what it means to make art now. The complexity of the contemporary drives the ethos of the course, acting as a stimulus to generate new ways of thinking and being in the world.
For information and online application details visit: www.crawford.mtu.ie/courses/ ma-in-contemporary-art-practice/
Applications Open Now For September 2025 Start
Email: crawford.enquiries@mtu.ie Phone: +353 (0)21 433522
Visual Artists’ News Sheet | May – June 2025
Columns
Plein Air
Irish Art History
Old Records
Lily of the Valley
CORNELIUS BROWNE REVISITS A SERIES OF PAINTINGS CHRONICLED IN HIS DIARY AS A YOUNG ARTIST.
MICHAEL HOLLY OUTLINES HIS RESEARCH AND FILM ON THE LIFE AND WORK OF BELGIAN ARTIST LILY VAN OOST.
FAINT PENCIL ON yellowed paper lights up
the morning: 7 March 1985. Along the predawn boreen strides a 16-year-old painter. !e sacred field sleeps in darkness. Over barbed wire, the teenager flings a backpack. Inside Roshine South Portal Tomb, a homemade easel has stood sentinel through the night. According to my diary: “A V of swans fly through rosy light, New Day Rising.” On 7 March 2025, exactly 40 years later, I climb into the same field at what I gauge to be the same moment. Were my younger self to emerge now from this tomb, lugging the cumbersome contraption put together with his father, the first thing he’d note would be my lightweight easel. I’m hurrying now, knowing I must greet the sunrise with brushstrokes. Here begins a series of excursions I plan to undertake into the pages of diaries I kept during the 1980s. Entering the grooves of a mind and body propelled by springtime vigour, I can’t help feeling like a worn-out stylus, hoping to raise a tune from old records. Do I possibly have the energy to recreate a daylong project that in 1985 saw me rotate twice around this 5000-year-old monument, painting as I moved, first outside the tomb, and then from within, looking out into the landscape to create two 360˚ panoramas, across 16 paintings? At least I now have a properly portable easel. !e air is soft and dung-scented, the hoofprint-holed ground thick with cowpats. Neolithic farmers, the first community to settle in this area, built the dolmen, which has fallen into a poor state of preservation. A painting from 1799 by Rev James Turner, shows it more intact, with the capstone in place. I put headphones over my ears, muting the lowing cattle. Where the young diarist entwines Whooper Swans – departing Ireland for their breeding grounds in the Icelandic tundra – with New Day Rising, he is referring not to the dawn, but to the third studio album by American punk band, Hüsker Dü, released in January 1985. With me that
day, I had brought my most precious possessions: a Sony Walkman and treasured cassette tapes. Nowadays, I don’t listen to music outdoors as I paint, preferring natural soundscapes. Over the coming hours, however, I will listen to the same albums in the same order. I’ve never streamed a song, but as my old tapes no longer play, I must at last join the current. And so, the voices of Elizabeth Fraser, Ian Curtis, Kate Bush, Morrissey, Mark E. Smith, Máire Ní Bhraonáin, and Siouxsie Sioux carry me across the day. For one glorious hour, the full Lenten sun gilds these ancient stones and blesses my lunchbox and flask. !ereafter, the seaward sky darkens, and a day unfolds, patterned around cloudbursts. Nearing noon, I complete the outer circuit and carry my easel inside the tomb. Painting at this pace in the open air, the sounds of my youth, seesawing between melody and noise, flooding my brain, I slip through an opening in time. Four decades evaporate, and the final four paintings are brushed by a time traveller. My disorientation grows so great that, for a flicker, I think Dad can help me cart the easel home. As a lifelong listener, I’ve learned that the older the recording, the more magic locked within. I lose myself in old records, savouring the sensation that when this note was sung, I did not exist; when this chord was played, Dad was still alive. !e sky reddens over the ruin inside which my grandmother was born in 1903, across the field from the portal tomb. I’m working blindly, sharp amber sunlight cutting into the corner of my vision. !e last thing I paint is Granny’s childhood home. A sticky, painty mess, I sit on one of the stones placed here by Neolithic hands. We are all historical shafts of light in the eternal reaches of time, even as our faces glow in the present sun. Cornelius Browne is an artist based in County Donegal.
Cornelius Browne at Roshine South Portal Tomb; photograph by Cornelia Browne, courtesy of the artist.
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Lily Van Oost spinning in her cottage in Black Valley in 1991; photograph by Grace Wells, courtesy of the author.
IN 2023, I was asked by Askeaton Contem-
porary Arts (ACA) to make a short film about the Belgian artist, Lily Van Oost (1932–97) – pronounced ‘Ohhst’ in the Flemish style. ACA had commissioned the curator Jes Fernie to write a book on a series of unknown or overlooked artists and artworks in Ireland – in Jes’ own words, “a selection of mad, frayed, totally normal stories about undone, uncelebrated, abandoned things,” and the film was made to coincide with its publication.) On parallel paths of discovery, Jes, ACA researcher Niamh Moriarty and I went in search of the work of the enigmatic artist. In a reflection of the diversity and scope of her work, we found several of these traces in unlikely and disparate places. Lily Van Oost was born in 1932, from a line of sixteenth-century Flemish master painters. She gained an early reputation as a talented painter, following her studies with museum and gallery exhibitions in Antwerp. However, she left the city, and her husband, behind in the late 1970s to move to the remote Black Valley near Killarney. After her arrival in Kerry, until her death in 1997, she produced an extensive body of work evoking a web of connections between nature, feminism, material, and landscape. To celebrate being granted Irish citizenship in 1986, Lily made a woven wall hanging, Brian Boru’s Coat, from raw wool given to her by local farmers, and donated it to the National Museum of Ireland. It was made in the style of a medieval coat from unprocessed wool, still containing traces of the Black Valley itself, as well as streaks of blue and orange from coloured fluid used by farmers to identify their sheep. When we requested to film Brian Boru’s Coat at the Museum’s textile collection, some traces of moths were found, triggering a collection-wide audit. Lily invited the presence of raw and natural materials in her artwork – she would use bog cotton, leaves, sticks – I’m certain she would have approved of the presence of these creatures on her coat and that she would have laughed at the trouble
they caused. In the 1980s and 1990s, Lily’s work was exhibited regularly at venues around Ireland, including the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, and Triskel Arts Centre in Cork. Her work at this time was both funny and provocative, and so often attracted bemused press attention. In 1989 she made a wool jumper for the Anna Livia statue in Dublin, but the city corporation refused to install it. Around that time, she also made a jumper for a double-decker Dublin bus – this time, eventually, successfully installing it. In our research we acquired a set of 6x4 prints showing textile, foam and plastic sculptures she made for a Women’s Artist’s Action Group (WAAG) exhibition sometime in the 1980s. !ese startling figures of foetuses, corpses and a powerful procession of female figures demonstrate Lily’s unwavering feminism and eye on social criticism. We found Lily’s work in all sorts of places: a large, cartoonish self-portrait made with nylon from a Pretty Polly tights factory hung in Bowler’s Garage in Killarney for almost three decades. As part of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts in 2024, curator Michele Horrigan exhibited this wonderful piece at Galway Arts Centre, along with a selection of drawings, images, and Lily of the Valley (2023) – the film that I made in collaboration with Mieke Vanmechelen, which can be viewed on the ACA website (askeatonarts.com). !ese traces of Lily Van Oost’s work that we found in newspapers, personal archives and on dusty shelves may just be the beginning of a rediscovery of a vast, hidden contribution to the Irish rural arts landscape. Michael Holly is an artist, filmmaker, researcher, and lecturer in Film Practice at Queen’s University Belfast. @mickholly
) Jes Fernie, Things left undone unsaid uncelebrated unplanned unfinished (Askeaton: ACA Public, 2023)
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Visual Artists’ News Sheet | May – June 2025
Columns
SSI/VAN Archive
Wellbeing
NCAD Student Protest
Courting Inspiration
A COLUMN BY ÁINE PHILLIPS, FIRST PUBLISHED BY THE SSI NEWSLETTER IN 1989, OUTLINES AN NCAD PROTEST.
AOIBHEANN GREENAN DISCUSSES THE ROOT OF CREATIVE IDEAS AND HOW ARTISTS CAN CULTIVATE THEM IN THEIR PRACTICE. HAVE YOU EVER found yourself deeply
Both images: “Don’t Destroy Art Education”, Protest and Street Performance by NCAD Students, 25 January 1989; photograph by Brian Tansey, courtesy of the SSI/VAN Publications Archive.
IN THE LIGHT of the severe cuts being
imposed on art education, and the education system as a whole, the students union of NCAD devised a street performance and protest to greet and confront the leaders of our nation on Budget Day, 25 January 1989. !e performance was centred around a loft by 7ft replica of the Mona Lisa. !e painting was carried in procession to the gates of the Dáil by students dressed in robes and masks, to the strains of baroque marching music, drum rolls, amid bunting and ribbons. In a tragic manner befitting the gravity of the occasion, the painting was ritually slashed and torn by the ‘Executioner’ using a 6ft high cardboard axe. Mona’s remains were then laid to rest in a large brightly decorated box adorned with ribbon and tag, the inscription upon which read “Dear Minister, here’s what you have done to Art Education, Love from the students of NCAD”. We were presenting our painting of the Mona Lisa to the Minister in the same manner as our education sys-
tem is presented to us – slashed and cut and torn. We sought to hand our present in at the gates of the Dáil for collection by Mr. Reynolds or Ms O’Rourke but unfortunately members of the Gardai restrained us from doing so in the interests of national security. It was a symbolic presentation however and we adjourned for refreshments in proud and festive spirits. We had used our skills as artists and designers to stage a performance with political meaning, public visibility and pointed message. Mona Lisa being the universally accessible and recognisable ‘Object d’Art’, the symbol of the beauty, tradition and cultural significance of art works and practice. We suggest our event encapsulated the destruction of such and provided an image that puts current Government policy in a nutshell. This article was written by Áine Phillips (then, President of NCAD Students Union) and published in SSI Newsletter, Vol. 10, No. 2., 1989.
immersed in research, only to suddenly start seeing your subject of focus everywhere? For me, this often happens with motifs, patterns, or colour palettes I’m working with, along with phrases and obscure references. !ey seem to pop up in the most unexpected places – like while waiting in line at the post o(ce! For some reason, I’ve always taken this as a positive sign, as though I’ve stepped into the slipstream of the work, now fully attuned to its rhythm. So, what’s really happening? !ere are many ways to interpret this phenomenon, which resonates differently, depending on your own worldview. One perspective comes from Ancient Greece. In Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015), Elizabeth Gilbert explores the concept of the daimon – creative spirits believed by the Ancient Greeks to assist artists in their work. !is view externalises creativity, suggesting that ideas exist independently and interact with us, rather than being solely products of our minds. Plato also described daimons as intermediaries between the divine and the human, offering inspiration and guidance. Carl Jung later expanded on this idea, linking it to his concept of the collective unconscious. From this perspective, focusing on a particular idea or motif aligns us with a pre-existing archetypal energy that carries its own momentum, drawing relevant experiences into our awareness like a magnet. Many artists, writers, and musicians have described moments when ideas seem to emerge from thin air; a song writes itself, or a melody appears in a dream, as if creativity has a will of its own. Cognitive psychology provides another angle. !e Baader-Meinhof phenomenon (or frequency illusion) describes the experience of suddenly noticing something everywhere. Terry Mullen coined the term in 1994 after realising that, upon hearing of the German terrorist group, Baader-Meinhof, he began noticing references to them frequently in a short span of time. !is phenomenon can be explained through two cognitive biases: ‘Selective Attention’, where once we’re aware of something, our brain is primed to notice it more often, filtering out unrelated stimuli; and ‘Confirmation Bias’, where we tend to favour information that aligns with our existing beliefs, reinforcing the illusion that the occurrence is increasing. As an artist, I’ve always embraced a ‘both-and’ approach to reality. For me, the neuroscientific explanation doesn’t diminish the archetypal perspective; rather, both offer valuable insights and together they satisfy a whole-brained understanding of the same phenomenon. What interests me more is how artists can intentionally harness and amplify the creative potential of this effect. So, here are some suggestions,
drawn from creative, magical, and psychological practices, to help you tap into this flow and enhance your creative process. Immersion: Surround yourself with materials related to your focus, whether podcasts, books, or films. Curate musical playlists and create both digital and physical mood boards, filled with images, colours, and textures. Marinating in your subject deepens your engagement and primes your mind to notice related elements in your environment, helping to spark new connections. Dream Journaling: !roughout history, many artists, from Leonardo da Vinci to Frida Kahlo, have documented their dreams in journals to inspire and inform their work. Consider keeping a journal by your bed to capture your dream the moment you wake up. By doing this regularly, your dream recall will improve dramatically. Over time, you’ll begin to map patterns and synchronicities between your inner and outer worlds, which you can then infuse into your creative work. Magical Approach: Create a ritual altar – this could even be your desk – and adorn it with symbolic items that correspond to your focus. Consider using tarot cards, sigils, or offerings to archetypal energies that resonate with your work. Jungian psychology supports the idea that symbolic engagement with archetypes activates the unconscious, which in turn influences conscious perception, helping to open channels for creative insight. Subconscious Programming: By combining meditation with focused visualisation and a(rmations, you can imprint your creative intentions into your subconscious, fine-tuning your ability to recognise opportunities and inspiration aligned with your focus. Research on neuroplasticity reveals that consistently directing our attention creates new neural connections to prioritise that information, making it easier to identify and act on creative impulses as they arise. Whichever approach you choose – ancient wisdom or modern psychology – the result is the same: immersing yourself in an idea makes it appear everywhere, as if the world is reflecting your inner landscape. !e key is to stay open to the flow of inspiration by consistently attuning your attention to the dreams, patterns, and everyday synchronicities that surround you. Most importantly, act on the inspiration you receive. !ink of it as a reciprocal relationship: you draw inspiration from the field and give back through your creation, maintaining the cycle. By nurturing this connection, the world will align with your artistic vision, guiding you toward new ideas and opportunities. Aoibheann Greenan is an Irish artist and the founder of Rodeo Oracle. rodeooracle.com
Visual Artists’ News Sheet | May – June 2025
Columns
Seminar
NIVAL
Crisis/ Death/ Resurrection
Archiving Oneself
DR JANE HUMPHRIES REPORTS ON A PAINTING SYMPOSIUM HELD AT TRISKEL ARTS CENTRE IN CORK ON 28 MARCH.
EVE PARNELL OULINES SOME ADVICE FOR ARTISTS ON HOW TO ORGANISE THEIR PERSONAL ARCHIVES.
UPON SEEING A photograph for the first
ARCHIVING ONESELF AS an artist typically
time, circa 1840, French painter Paul Delaroche famously declared that “From today, painting is dead.” Since then, the thanatophobia (death anxiety) surrounding the medium has produced a myriad of theoretical, philosophical, and artistic ideas. On Friday 28 March, ‘Crisis/death/resurrection; a painting symposium’ was convened by Dr Donal Moloney from Crawford School of Art and Design (Munster Technical University). !e audience assembled at Triskel Arts Centre to hear 11 invited artists, theorists, and academics discuss the contemporary relevance of painting. James Merrigan’s keynote speech, unPainting via The Lost Highway, segued painting, photography, theory, and moving image, as exemplified in the films of David Lynch. We were shown a clip from Blue Velvet (1986) – always pleasurable but strangely spectral in the auditorium of a converted church. Given Lynch’s recent passing, the film clip was met with generous applause in appreciation of his art and life. Brendan Fletcher’s concise presentation, titled Endgame: The Motel Paintings of Jonathan Lasker, showed the sparse compositions of the American artist’s abstract paintings. Fletcher’s paper traced a purposefully banal and kitsch aesthetic, which was cleverly framed around conceptual ideas from Yve-Alain Bois. My own contribution was a paper, entitled (Still) Watching the Paint Dry, which mainly focused on Irish artists – including Ronnie Hughes, John Noel Smith, Paul Nugent, and Katy Simpson – highlighting cyclical marginalisation at certain times, not only for the medium but also for female painters, while citing feminist philosopher Elizabeth Grosz’s concept of ‘bioaesthetics’. Playing devil’s advocate, Professor Magnus Quaife provocatively suggested that we should turn the question around. For painting to have died, shouldn’t it first have been alive? What, then, is the site of its liveliness? Quaife used ideas surrounding Gilbert Simondon’s notion of ‘transindividuation’ – the process by which individuals construct relations between themselves to form an interconnected whole – arguing that the artist, viewer, and work of art add to painting’s vitality, and that these ideas can be transferred into pedagogical settings. !ree emerging researchers presented confident papers showing the relationships between conceptual ideas and their own practice. Glasgow-based artist and doctoral researcher, Sitian Zeng’s presentation, Between Surfaces: Performative Painting in the Post-digital Age, revealed how her own work is made with intriguing manipulations of paint, inspired by art historian Marie de Brugerolle’s concepts of performativity. Rachael Gunning demonstrated how the work of contemporary Irish painter, Caoilfhionn Hanton, seeks to “reverse the dense
miasma of online experience.” Associate Professor Dominic Shepherd reminded us of the magical, alchemical, and illusionistic material qualities of paint. !is was followed by the theoretical manifesto, On Painting: From Method and Material Paralysis to Methodological Innovation by Professor Alistair Payne, who stated that the question of painting’s relevance creates hypercritical anxieties for contemporary painters while reconceptualising how they use their materials. !e presentations concluded with playful engagement with the theme by Dr Rachel Magdeburg and Dr John Walter. Magdeburg’s paper, titled New Spirits and Geists: Contemporary Zombie Figurative Painting, introduced the work of painters Jenna Gribbon and Nicole Eisenman. Her analysis showed how their compositions “enable the viewer to step into the geist or ghost of the artist, akin to ‘selfies’ and other methods of self-staging online, such as computer gaming technology, offering a first-person perspective, like zombie shooters.” Walter’s compelling paper, The Cicada and the Skeuomorph: Dormancy and Revival as Survival Strategies in Painting, began with Jasper Johns’s Cicada (1979), then threaded theoretical insights from feminist theorist, Karen Barad, and historian and sociologist, Lewis Mumford. Walter concluded by offering a most fascinating thought: that painting’s resilience is by virtue of the medium’s capacity to adapt through periods of rest and resuscitation, much like an insect. Such inventive thought processes were a privilege to witness. From paintings that bleed (Annie Riga) to concepts of the undead (Magdeburg), as well as the inclusion of theoretical heavyweights (like Deleuze and Guattari and Isabelle Graw) and numerous references to Philip Guston (“the painter’s painter”), the reasons for the debate became clear. !e haunting death knell, forever lurking in the background of the medium, pushes the impulse to paint into more interesting conceptual places. A panel discussion at the end of the seminar prompted interesting observations from the audience, which further added to the very stimulating and warmly hosted gathering. As an artist who never lost his relationship to the materiality of paint, despite being known for his films (which were just another media to “paint his dreams with movement and sound”), it seems fitting to give the last word to David Lynch: “It is the love of paint, moving paint around, making things you know, in space, just incredible.”
Dr Jane Humphries is an independent art historian, writer, and researcher specialising in feminist theory.
refers to the process of documenting, preserving and organising your work, experiences, and personal history in a way that can be accessed and appreciated in the future. An artist’s archive usually consists of documentation and ‘secondary material’ – the material traditionally created alongside an artwork. !is secondary material can include exhibition press releases, price lists, newspaper clippings, diaries, photographs, and more. It is this kind of secondary material that !e National Irish Visual Arts Library (NIVAL) is interested in collecting. • Documentation: If you don’t already do so, it is advisable to start documenting your work, for example, by simply photographing your artworks. Make a collection of high-quality images of completed works, sketches, or experiments. Record relevant details, such as date, medium, and dimensions. • Exhibition History: Keep detailed exhibition records that track where and when your work has been shown, including galleries, museums, online platforms, or pop-up events. • Catalogue: Save documentation and catalogue your works, whether ‘traditional’ artforms or performance works. Add any special notes or meaning behind specific pieces. Another option is to record experiences, perhaps in the form of a journal. • Ephemera: Make personal collections that accompany your practice, to include ephemera such as letters, press clippings, or any artifact that has meaning in relation to your work. !e benefits of maintaining your own archive include: • Ownership and Control: Archiving your work ensures that you’re the one keeping track of it. In the future, this may help with copyright issues, proving authenticity, or even answering questions about your art. • Legacy: By archiving your work, you are building a legacy as an artist. When
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researchers and art historians look back at an artist’s body of work, they can observe the evolution, the uniqueness, and the significance of their contributions. It’s a way to ensure your work is remembered and valued over time. As an artist, you should identify the most suitable repository for your materials and enter into dialogue with them. It’s a good idea to reach out before you put too much work into organising your materials. NIVAL is dedicated to the documentation of twentieth century and contemporary Irish visual art, craft and design. We collect, store and make accessible for research an unparalleled collection of documentation about Irish art, encompassing artforms from painting and sculpture to design, craft, fashion, performance and much more. NIVAL acquires documentation generated by or about artists, designers and others engaged with art and design in Ireland, including collectors, writers, critics, commercial dealers and galleries, societies, artists’ groups and studios, and institutions that contribute to the visual culture of Ireland. A key aspect of NIVAL’s acquisition policy is that we do not judge materials based on artistic ‘quality’, proficiency, or reputation; every artist and item is equally valued at NIVAL. !e generous donation of art and design related documentation, from individuals and arts organisations alike, makes an invaluable contribution to the scope of the NIVAL collection. If you are a practicing artist, relative of an artist, or are associated with a gallery, studio, arts organisation or other institution, and you would like to contribute material to NIVAL, to ensure the preservation and long-term public access of information about your work, please get in touch by emailing: nivalinfo@ncad.ie. Eve Parnell is a practicing artist and Artists Database Editor/Library Assistant at NIVAL. nival.ie
Archive boxes from the An Post Stamp Design Collection, National Irish Visual Arts Library; photograph by Eve Parnell, courtesy of NIVAL.
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Member Profile
Visual Artists’ News Sheet | May – June 2025
Daphne Wright, Kitchen Table, 2014, life casts: two figures, two chairs and table with oil cloth, hand-painted Jesmonite, dimensions variable, collection of Ömer Koç; photograph courtesy of the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London.
Deep-Rooted Things JOANNE LAWS INTERVIEWS DAPHNE WRIGHT AHEAD OF HER SOLO EXHIBITION AT THE ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM.
Joanne Laws: We both studied in Sligo RTC (now Atlantic Technological University). I studied Fine Art in the late-90s, during an inspiring period for female Irish sculptors. Was there a sense of optimism at this time, or did momentum happen against the odds? Daphne Wright: Well, everybody left in the 80s – the recession was brutal. I left Ireland in 1989. In the 90s, I just remember going from fellowship to fellowship and residency to residency, in order to sustain my practice. I was a fellow in Cheltenham, a Henry Moore fellow in Manchester, and spent a year in the British School at Rome. During my education in Sligo in the early 80s, really strong women sculptors were constantly being pointed out to us; I was learning all the time through talking and conversation. !e teaching staff in Sligo at the time included Seán Larkin, Seán McSweeney, Fred Conlon, Con Lynch, Nuala Maloney, Ruairí Ó Cuív, Seán O’Reilly, and John O’Leary. !ere was also Robert Stewart and Peter Charney – he was Australian and came with a completely different viewpoint. I studied sculpture and ceramics, but we were such a small year group that we were all friendly with each other. JL: Now that you’re back in Dublin, do you have a studio? DW: I’ve made two rooms of my house into one space, and that’s where I normally work. I’m very grateful for that because renting a studio is just so expensive. !at’s how I’ve had to do it, ever since I had children; it has become a particular kind of process, and I love the routine. When I’m fabricating a large sculpture, I temporarily rent the workshop of a cabinet maker in the northwest of Ireland. JL: What does your day-to-day studio routine look like?
Visual Artists’ News Sheet | May – June 2025
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Daphne Wright [L]: Fridge Still Life, 2021, unfired clay and mixed media, 132 x 48.5 x 52 cm on freestanding plinth; photograph by the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford; [R]: Kitchen Table, 2014 [detail]; photographs courtesy of the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London.
DW: I would spend a lot of time testing, exploring, and making things. I’m not just testing the materials; I also read, research, and feed my brain at the same time. Once I start to understand what I’m doing, then I make – which is often the nicest part. On occasion, I would work up to a really large piece, which is not just about making, but also about raising the money to fund it. JL: The life-size figures of your two sons have previously featured in your work. Were they made through casting processes? DW: When the boys were smaller, I made Kitchen Table (2014) in hand-painted Jesmonite, which involved casting each of them separately in smaller pieces. !is was while they were just emerging from being children and going into adolescence. Over ten years later, I’ve gotten consensus to cast them again, now that they are on the cusp of manhood, for a new work called Sons and Couch (2025) which will be exhibited for the first time this summer. !e figures are complete casts and are hollow. !ey were fabricated using the old-fashioned life cast skill, and that’s really important. It’s not computer-generated or 3D printed; it’s a very labour intensive, traditional process. It’s also quite an undertaking for the person being cast, because the body is completely encased, albeit at different times. You use the plaster to take a mould of the body, as if trapping a moment in time. When the casts are assembled as a complete sculpture, everything is then painted in a subdued kind of colour – one that has the essence of memory. It isn’t real colour but how one might remember colour. !e figures are then assembled into an installation or sculptural scene. !at’s what I’m grappling with at the moment, because I sometimes have more elements than I need. It can be a painful process, editing down to just what is necessary and what functions. JL: The domestic seems to be a reoccurring subject matter within your sculptural arrangements, which includes figures, personal items, plants, and household
appliances. Why is that? DW: Well, there are a couple of things that make this kind of complicated. Firstly, you go to museums and discover that there are very few women artists represented in collections. !ere’s something really interesting about the casts and the trapping of time that monumentalise the domestic, while placing motherhood and the feminine at the heart of the museum. In addition, I often wonder why there are certain objects within our museums that are mute or silent. !ey become stagnant, I suppose, and their sense of being an artwork actually disappears. For me, that’s a central concern. When an artwork has a presence and a soul of its own, then the other things just become props. Aside from Sons and Couch, there will be other objects in the show, including Fridge Still Life (2021) – an open refrigerator made from unfired clay, containing the usual things on the shelves, such as a chicken, ready for the oven. On top of the fridge, there’s a large vase of tulips in the process of decay. So, in many ways, it’s a contemporary still life, evoking questions at the centre of domestic life: who fills the fridge, who empties the fridge, and who are we cooking for? JL: A solo exhibition of your work will be presented at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford this summer. It will feature new work, developed in response to sculptures in the Ashmolean Cast Gallery. What can you tell us about this show? DW: !e exhibition title, ‘Deep Rooted !ings’, is taken from a line in the Yeats poem, The Municipal Gallery Revisited (1939): “My children may find here Deep-rooted things.” !e Ashmolean Cast Gallery is quite amazing. It contains ancient Greek and Roman casts that are almost complete. !ere’s a fascinating collection of athletes that really do still hold the qualities of young men. I took the children to the Ashmolean a lot when they were small, so in a way, it forms part of their upbringing and their learning. One’s fascination, as a mother and as an artist, looking at objects, imbues them, in turn, with fascination.
!e exhibition also responds to the Hugh Lane Gallery Collection, looking specifically at the still life painting tradition. !e collection contains flower paintings by some of the very first Irish women to have gone to university or art college, many of them studying in the UK or France. !eir flower paintings are quite beautiful and quietly radical. !ere are also some very poignant portraits, including a beautiful one of W.B. Yeats as a boy reading a book, painted by his father, John Butler Yeats, in c.1886. !ese artworks will be reproduced in an accompanying publication, alongside writing by Emily LaBarge and from Ashmolean Museum Director, Alexander Sturgis, and Hugh Lane Gallery Director, Barbara Dawson. !e show is about combining those institutions and looking at the differences in their collection: one is a world class collection of antiquity; while the other is a more modern national collection containing contemporary works. !ey employ different languages, but for me, it’s all museology, permeated by the domestic. JL: There seems to be the recurring theme of young men, portrayed throughout the ages? DW: !at’s true – young men at a pivotal point in their lives, whether the young athletes in the Ashmolean collection, or my own sons on the cusp of adulthood. Arguably, there were similar pressures for young men in both the classical and contemporary eras. A lot of this subtext is not verbal; however, we know it instinctively. I think that is largely where my work exists – at these kind of thresholds that are universally understood. ‘Ashmolean Now, Daphne Wright: Deep-Rooted Things’ will be presented at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford from 13 June 2025 to 8 February 2026. The making of new works for this exhibition has been supported by a Visual Art Project Award from The Arts Council of Ireland. ashmolean.org
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Visual Artists’ News Sheet | May – June 2025
Member Profile
Sonic Hauntings JOSEPH YOUNG OUTLINES RECENT OUTPUTS OF HIS DOCTORAL RESEARCH INCLUDING A SOUND TRAIL AND VINYL RECORD. IT WAS MAY 2019 when I started my prac-
tice-based PhD at University College Dublin. I came to it late in life, after a career working as an actor and composer in the UK for over 20 years, before retraining in the early 2000s as a visual artist. I arrived in Ireland at the suggestion of my professor at SMARTlab UCD, Lizbeth Goodman, who I knew from London. We got talking again after I invited her to a retrospective of my work at the Estorick Collection in 2018, and three weeks later, I was making a doctoral funding application to the Irish Research Council. I was invited to become artist-in-residence at Killruddery House in County Wicklow, famous for its original seventeenth-century garden design. My role was to investigate their extensive private archives and to make work in response, which could be shared with the public. Killruddery is unusual in that it is one of a handful of ‘Big Houses’ that still have their original Anglo-Irish landowners living and working on the estate. !e Brabazon family have lived on the land since 1618, and the estate is now run as a heritage business. I wanted to use listening as a research methodology to interact with the family, the environment and the archives, in order to understand first of all what was there, and then, after selecting archival items of interest, to think about ways that the stories they told could be represented as an immersive experience. During this time, I lived peripatetically in the gothic-style East Wing of the house, in and amongst the family heirlooms, portraits and grand furniture. It was an embodied experience that led me to feel like a spectre in that environment, haunting the place as an interloper, whilst feeling the weight of a history that seemed to dwell within its walls and grounds. As an artist from England investigating a post-colonial archive, I was very aware of my responsibility to criticality, coupled with a sense of fairness towards the hospitality of the Brabazon family who have cared for the Killruddery estate for over four hundred years. !is lens of critical listening that I applied to the archive, bearing witness to the voices of the family, walking and recording the house, the grounds and the estate, led eventually to the creation of a hauntological sound trail, The Ancestors. I imagined the spectral ancestors of the archives still stalking the pathways of the ornamental gardens and created a means for audiences to meet and interact with them using GPS and a smartphone. !rough the ECHOES app, sounds were written onto the landscape and activated by listeners’ movements in space.) I came to think of this as a form of electronic dowsing, using a smartphone to scour the land for traces of history. At the same time, I wanted to create a fixed object that would itself become a part of the archives, beyond the fleeting digital
encounter of The Ancestors. I initiated a dialogue with visual artists Anthony Kelly and David Stalling – who run a record label, Farpoint Recordings in Dún Laoghaire – and they supported me in releasing a limited edition artwork in 2024, which took the form of a vinyl album, Sonic Hauntings in a Big House.2 To promote the album, we undertook a series of live listening events at Killruddery House, Morphine Raum in Berlin, and Mermaid Arts Centre in Bray – who also helped design a publication for the launch of the sound trail, titled Mapping the Ancestors. !e album proposes an alternate way of listening to site, with the conceptual framing of ‘Inside’ and ‘Outside’ (instead of Side A and Side B), featuring sounds from within the Big House on one side of the record, and sounds originating outdoors on the other. It has been a long and rewarding journey, over the last six years, becoming familiar with the Wicklow mountains and its coastline, especially since I discovered that Bray was previously known as the ‘Brighton of Ireland’, and my hometown is Brighton. Joseph Young is an artist based between Brighton, Berlin and Bray, who works in spatial audio and performance. artofnoises.com
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https://explore.echoes.xyz/collections/y4SIsHeeHBtRGVe1 2 https://ofnoises.bandcamp.com/album/sonichauntings-in-a-big-house
Both images: Joseph Young, The Ancestors, 2022, sound trail, public preview event, Killruddery House, July 2022; photograph © and courtesy of the artist.
Visual Artists’ News Sheet | May – June 2025
Member Profile
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État Sauvage TOM CLIMENT OUTLINES THE EVOLUTION OF HIS PAINTING PRACTICE AND HIS RECENT EXHIBITION AT CCI PARIS.
Tom Climent, Studio, 2024, oil and plaster on board, 50 x 60 cm; photograph by Jörg Köster, courtesy of the artist and Solomon Fine Art.
AFTER I LEFT secondary school in 1987,
I studied engineering for a few years. At the same time, I was doing night classes in painting at Crawford College of Art and Design with the late Jo Allen, who encouraged me greatly. I later studied at Crawford full-time and qualified with a Fine Art degree in 1995. I’ve been working as an artist since then, later returning to college and completing a Masters by Research in 2011. Ten years ago, Solomon Fine Art in Dublin took me on as one of their artists. I’ve since had regular solo exhibitions, the most recent being ‘Pilgrim’ in May 2024. Exhibiting with Solomon has been a huge support to my practice, which has given me the sense of a commercial outlet for my work. As an artist, I probably started out making work for myself, but it’s important that it also goes out into the world and reaches people. My recent exhibition at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris, called ‘Wilding/État Sauvage’ (1 February – 13 April), presented a selection of paintings made over the last few years. A new book, published by Gandon Editions, was launched at the exhibition opening, with subsequent launches in Solomon Fine Art and Lavit Gallery, Cork. !e 120-page hardback monograph documents my work over the last decade or so. It contains 128 illustrations and an essay by Cristín Leach, with additional texts by Mark Ewart, Carissa Farrell, Mary McCarthy, and Michael Waldron (gandoneditions. com). For me, painting is trying to find a balance between being unselfconscious, allowing the work to be formed, and also making critical judgements. It’s a process of making the work and then reflecting on why I feel certain paintings are more successful than
others. !ese paintings then become almost like signposts in the road ahead – reference points for the work as it progresses. I tend to work in isolation; I don’t share a studio space, and, over the years, the work has become quite internal in nature. When I start on a new series, it’s quite a natural undertaking, and it comes to an end quite naturally too, when I feel I shouldn’t make any more of them. I don’t draw or sketch. I start each piece with a rough, almost hazy, image in my head. I want the work to reveal itself to me; through painting, things become clearer. Over time, the work takes on a life of its own and moves forward under its own weight. What has always fascinated me about painting is the ability to make a flat, two-dimensional surface seem three-dimensional. !is idea of creating space has been the cornerstone of my practice. From the early gestural paintings to my more structured work of the present, creating space that the viewer can enter is an enduring interest. !e abstract structures and shapes in the paintings are mechanisms that invite the viewer to a threshold. !e paintings merge references to architecture and landscape to generate contemplations on shelter, ritual and hopefulness. !e surfaces of the paintings are also quite important to the experience of the work. When I start a piece, I first paint the whole surface one colour; as in music, this becomes the keynote of the painting. I use plaster and sand, building up the surfaces. I try to allow the history of the painting to be visible in the finished works; I want it to tell a story. With my work over the last ten years or so, I’ve been using abstract geometric shapes and structures, almost like grids, to
Tom Climent, Helios, 2018, oil, plaster, and sand on canvas, 153 x 183 cm; photograph by Jörg Köster, courtesy of the artist and Solomon Fine Art.
Tom Climent, Gateway, 2024, oil, plaster, and sand on canvas, 183 x 244 cm; photograph by Brian Quinlan, courtesy of the artist and Solomon Fine Art.
provide a foundation for the paint. I then start to shape them into something more recognisable; I don’t think the work I do is wholly abstract. I want there to be some way into them – some element or narrative that the viewer can relate to. I think all the work I’ve done has existed on this border between abstraction and representation. My most recent work, which was exhibited in CCI Paris, has more natural forms in reaction to the more hard-edged geometric shapes I had previously been using. Flowers, plants and trees are all suggested in this new series. Some are quite recognisable, while others are imbued within
landscape to become abstracted shapes and natural forms. I’m currently developing a new series of paintings for my next exhibition at Solomon Fine Art in 2026. I don’t plan or think too much at this stage; I just allow the work to be made. As the exhibition gets closer, I’ll see what I have in the studio and start selecting work that has some overall connection and narrative. Tom Climent is a painter based in Cork City. tomcliment.com
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Visual Artists’ News Sheet | May – June 2025
Festival / Biennial
Native Memory Tracking, a workshop by Éireann and I and Thaís Muniz, Nun’s Island Theatre, Galway, 21 September 2023; photograph by Mary McGraw, courtesy of the artists.
Thomas Pool: How does your proposed work respond to understandings of access, inclusion, and sociality, outlined in the EVA Platform Commission brief ?
Inclusion & Sociality THOMAS POOL INTERVIEWS THE EVA PLATFORM COMMISSION ARTISTS DEVELOPING NEW WORK FOR THE 41ST EDITION, WHICH OPENS ON 29 AUGUST.
Bridget O’Gorman: Deep Time is a nonconforming, intersectional research group. It stems from my ongoing enquiry around sustaining a practice in a disabled body. Invoking the notion of cosmic time, amassed through geological formation, Deep Time prompts dialogue on how we contextualise time and its relationship to creative productivity. Slowness, alongside an overt acknowledgment of support and interdependency – in human, non-human, and often unseen contexts – forms an integral part of this enquiry. We meet virtually, inviting participants to make ‘offerings’ towards thinking about access as ours to shape. In March, we converged in person for a slow retreat on the edge of a bog at the Common Knowledge Centre, County Clare. Feeling our way through the concept of ‘crip time’, as it rubs up against participation, authorship, and visibility, emphasis was prioritised around support, rest, and comfort towards non-dominant, experimental knowledge exchange and reflection. Colm Keady-Tabbal: I have proposed the installation of two identical works in Limerick and Beirut, which will be realised through a partnership between EVA International and Beirut Art Centre. !e social dimension of this project exists as the initiation of a temporary alignment between these two sites and institutions in Ireland and Lebanon. Éireann and I: Based on our experience collaborating with migrant communities, we’ve noted a frequently overlooked access require-
Visual Artists’ News Sheet | May – June 2025
Festival / Biennial
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[Top Left]: Colm Keady-Tabbal, Lucky Once, 2024, video projection with audio, installation view, Galway Art Centre; photograph by Jed Niezgoda, courtesy of the artist. [Bottom Left]: Olivia Normile, Cut Outs, 2025; image © and courtesy of the artist. [Right]: Lyónn Wolf, De-production, 2025, research image; photograph © and courtesy of the artist.
ment: language interpretation. Language is intricately linked to emotion. Allowing individuals to speak in their mother tongue and listening attentively to them can enrich our emotional understandings and strengthen our connections with others. !e pervasive dominance of English marginalises non-English speakers. It is not often the case that language interpretation services are provided in arts and cultural spaces. Consequently, most multilingual people prioritise speaking in English, leading to the gradual abandonment of their mother tongue. However, where language barriers exist, people find ways to communicate. Drawing inspiration from multilingual, migrant families, in which generational language gaps are common, we are hoping to unravel what happens in the space between languages. Lyónn Wolf: De-production is the working title for the world of stuff I’m busy with at the moment. !e work continues my interest in counter propositional social systems and the politics of space. In this instance, exploring what connection, care and mutual aid look like, when people formulate relational structures away from the nuclear family model – which I understand as an exclusionary, proprietary and state-centred institution that can be particularly oppressive for working class, queer, trans, and crip people. For EVA, I’m working with El Reid-Buckley, who organises Limerick Alternative Pride, and Dyke Nite, who run wildly popular queer parties. !e collaboration operates as a kind of mutual aid in which I get to work with people who know the local scene really well and I can extend the commission to support community activity. It’s an incredibly hard time for so many
queer, trans, and crip people with basic access to economic support, healthcare, and housing in a continual state of erosion. People’s lives are being used as fodder for political gain on the world stage. I think we need to turn towards each other to learn and develop tools for navigating shared struggle. We also need spaces for pleasure and joy – there is no liberation without a really good party. Olivia Normile: Drawing from my personal experience of using online disabled networks for support, discovery and kinship, this work expands on the interplay of agency, navigation and stewardship of physical and digital sites. !is proposal is not a response to the ‘lack’ of online cultural experiences, rather a continuation of the work already set by disabled communities in the digital realm. !e work revolves around notions of interruption and disruption, particularly in relation to speech and movement. !e concept of slow-making, repetition, and the added labour of disabled people, particularly in educating others about issues of accessibility and agency, features throughout. As an artist living with life-long illnesses, over time I have learned to adapt my research and making methods. !is is reflected in the materials, pacing and sequencing of my proposed work. TP: Which artistic research methods / participatory frameworks / critical discourses are you drawing on to develop the commission? BOG: Whilst I draw upon queer, crip, feminist, and decolonial discourses, these are intended merely as a
basis within which we hope to nourish community, constellations of knowledge, gestural, joyful and hybrid forms of kinship and solidarity. !e project exists as a process that we might explore together from our diverse perspectives, interests, and embodied experiences. In doing so, we attempt to reify and visualise alternate modes of being – moving at our own pace – to dream towards or embody what that might look like in practice. CKT: I’m working with an Arabic expression of love that invokes both the temporality and materiality of death, and the potential translations of this text in the Irish language. I’m interested in memorials as incomplete structures, as sites designed to incite memory, that are experienced in a state of distraction. I have been spending a lot of time looking at state memorials and corporate signage. ÉaI: !e project draws on critical work in sound studies, including Pauline Oliveros’s theory of deep listening, which refers to an active and focused way of listening to sounds, music, or any auditory stimuli. It also draws on artist Brandon LaBelle’s ideas of Sonic Agency, whereby “the invisible, the overheard, the itinerant, and the weak” can utilise sonic strategies to resist contemporary social and political crises. !is is combined with the discourses about migration and the lack of agency that this position enforces. Together, we’re working with multi-lingual performance artists whose lived experiences of migration, and practices as performers, inform the installation’s content. We are lucky to be mentored by Riah Naief, a
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Visual Artists’ News Sheet | May – June 2025
Festival / Biennial
sound artist and director of Listen Gallery in Glasgow. Riah has built a space specifically for sound art rooted in feminist and Sufist approaches. Riah has said: “‘Listen’ is an acronym for ‘Love Is Serving !e Ears Now’ – which considers listening a model of care. To love and to listen, for me, are two interlinking states to constantly strive for, both abundant, rooted in understanding, acceptance, imagining and dreaming. Everything in the gallery’s programme is curated to give people the space to think about listening as an attentional and behavioural shift which can move from the individual to the collective.” LW: I’ve been working with popular science fiction tropes, particularly from the Alien movies, as an aesthetic space of thinking through what de-production could look like. !is opens up to playing with ideas of alien reproduction, xenophobia, space time, and consent. I’m currently working with Transboydom, a professional Dom, to incorporate BDSM into a developing performance. As a form of radical care, I’m interested in how BDSM can respond to, and possibly unravel, family dynamics that trouble us. In terms of practices, I love the work of Black Quantum Futurism, the reflexive way that they generate community space, and then form functional archives of their work and its intentions. ON: I ask: “What remains of our presence and our passages upon the spaces we move through?” In the beginning, I visited EVA’s archive, Never Look Back, both online and in-person to explore locations used by EVA previously. Some of the film elements I have created in response to these sites feel like lost and found footage – records of speculative conversations. From this, I am creating scenes, journeys, and stagings, exploring stewardship through non-human guides and narrators. Key to my research is consideration of the act of screening a film, not just as a passive conventional experience, but as something that can be dismantled, restructured, and reinterpreted. !is deconstructed approach to filmmaking calls into question conventional and unconscious ableist screening set ups by laying bare material, labour, and overlooked narratives. TP: How do you envisage the manifestation of your work within the context of the 41st EVA International programme? BOG: !e research group are invited to make offerings which could manifest as a range of outputs – for example, text, image, or video. My offering exists as new writing under the working title: Unconformity Objects. !e geological term ‘unconformity’ is commonly used to describe two juxtaposing rock layers, separated by a sharp line. !e phenomenon exists as evidence of how the earth has evolved over an expanse of time, far greater than is humanly possible to fathom. Collective reflections will be platformed via an accessible website, developed throughout the project with socially engaged designers, Take Courage. !e platform will be launched along with virtual and physical public interactions, readings or workshops throughout the EVA programme. As the project finds its way towards public encounter, the activities proposed must be negotiated, evolutionary, and scalable – prioritising an ethos of access intimacy at its heart.
– Rema Hamid, Ayesha Syeddah and Dagogo Hart. !e development of the script took place through participatory engagement workshops with the artists. !e final installation will be developed with a sound designer, Oscar Freeny. LW: El Reid-Buckley and I are currently brainstorming for the activities of !e Breeding Room, a temporary community centre that will run at STARLING as part of Alt Pride in early August. Together with Dyke Nite, we are collaborating on extending !e Breeding Room into a rowdy party that will launch EVA International on 29 August. As a well-lubricated joint across the two social spaces, I’ll perform a new work as a prelude to the party that combines much of the research I’ve been engaged in. It’s a lot of activity, but I feel more and more urgency for community-based work to be actualised beyond a symbolic abstraction or performance for an institution. ON: !e work will explore modes of screening and installation making within non-gallery spaces, manifesting online and onsite in Limerick City. !e pacing of works is an important aspect of my installation practice, and I find this spatial route of discovery can be mirrored within online installations. !e onsite work will tether to the experience of the online work, while not privileging it over the website experience. Bridget O’Gorman is a visual artist and writer currently based in County Tipperary. bridgetogorman.com
Colm Keady-Tabbal is an Irish-Lebanese artist based in Dublin and New York. Cofounded by Beulah Ezeugo and Joselle Ntumba, Éireann and I is a community archive and memory project documenting the lives of Black migrants in Ireland. eireannandiarchive.com
Lyónn Wolf is an artist and writer currently engaged with de-productive trans and class poetics. @lyonn_wolf
Olivia Normile is an artist exploring language, communication, and perception through animation, installation, and experimental film. @olivia_normile
CKT: I’m interested in producing a work that is necessarily fragmented and distributed. !is project will be visible from public space. I’m looking forward to it becoming a backdrop for other things to happen. ÉandI: !e project will culminate in a collaboratively created multi-channel audio work. !e audio is a sort of play that takes place in a call centre, which is a setting where power relations, listening, language, and experiences of precarity all culminate. Collaboration methods will be shaped through discussions with a mentor, with the script co-created and performed by multilingual migrant artists from and based in Ireland
[All Images]: Bridget O’Gorman, Deep Time, 2025, film still; image © and courtesy of the artist.
The Visual Artists’ News Sheet
Critique
Edition 79: May – June 2025
Maria Fusco and Margaret Salmon, ‘History of the Present’, installation view, Golden Thread Gallery; photograph by Simon Mills, courtesy of the artists and Golden Thread Gallery.
Critique
Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2025
‘Kunstkammer’ Lismore Castle Arts 22 March – 26 October 2025
[All images]: ‘Kunstkammer’, installation view, Lismore Castle Arts; photographs by Jed Niezgoda, courtesy of the artists and Lismore Castle Arts.
THE KUNSTKAMMER OR wunderkammer,
the ‘cabinet of curiosities’, is, by its very nature, ostentatious. It represents wealth and worldliness, a capacity to not only collect various rare treasures but to showcase them in a suitably resplendent setting. !ere is a vanity to such endeavours, as noted in Samuel Quiccheberg’s 1565 advice to Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria on assembling a “repository of artificial and marvelous things”: “We are not dividing up for philosophers, precisely in line with nature itself, all natural objects: rather, we are sorting out for princes, into certain uncomplicated orderings, objects that are mostly pleasant to observe.”) !e kunstkammer is intended not just to be shown, but to be shown off. !e current exhibition at Lismore Castle, owned by the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, would thus seem to qualify on account of its prestigious lineage alone. Yet, rather than simply presenting family heirlooms, ‘Kunstkammer’ invites Robert O’Byrne to curate “a re-creation and a re-invention of the genre,” combining historical artefacts, everyday accoutrements, contemporary artworks and esoteric oddities – as per Gabriel Kaltemarckt’s 1587 definition, comprising paintings and sculptures, local and foreign rarities, and “antlers, horns, claws, feathers and other things belonging to strange and curious animals.”2 Two full-length pier mirrors are adorned with hand-painted scenes of grotesque creatures and protruding sculptural busts of cherubs. A sphere of snail shells cluster into an impenetrable, self-contained mass. Cabinets of sinuously carved hardwood open
up to reveal bronze bowls, spilling over with angular shards of coloured glass. !e exhibition display, which demarcates the gallery’s central space into a series of compartments and corridors, stages a number of such distinct tableaux, some more fantastical than others. A particular novelty is The Prize Fight (c.1900) by William Hart & Sons, a whimsical construction that features stuffed squirrels engaged in a boxing match. !e scenario, which begins with the rodents shaking hands and ends with one pugilist collapsed across the canvas, takes place over six sequential dioramas, resembling a comic strip. Like the best parts of a kunstkammer, it defies description or categorisation, with its very indefinability indicating only the idiosyncrasies of its makers and the unorthodox taste of its owner. !e pairing of a sculpture of the Cavendish Serpent – a recurring motif in the Devonshire family heraldry – with a standing lamp incorporating a taxidermied snake, makes for a tense encounter, as the two reptiles lock gazes, perpetually frozen in anticipation. Of the contemporary artworks, John Kindness’s pieces feel especially at home. His acrylic drawings of scenes from Greek mythology, delicately rendered on antique cotton breeches, feel suitably otherworldly: Circe (2012) portrays twinned, conjoined hybrids of a sailor in naval rig and his monstrous, tattooed, porcine alter-ego (the title alludes to the enchantress who turned Odysseus’s crew into pigs). !e image is doubled, reversed, like a playing card, and, like the under-
garments themselves, evinces a peculiarly old-fashioned salaciousness. Kindness repeats the trick with Scylla and Charybdis (2012) a pair of cast resin toilet seats rendered with stylised beasts, schematic figures and decorative flourishes. Odysseus had to chart a narrow passage between the two sea monsters, an adventure that idiomatically refers to choosing between two evils. !ere is a juxtaposition of the profound and the profane here that would likely have amused Quiccheberg’s patron – and his guests. In spite of these exceptions, the presentation of other contemporary artworks is less considered. Pieces such as Alice Maher’s aforementioned agglomeration of snail shells, The Four Directions (2005), or Dorothy Cross’ eerily discomfiting Red Rest and Red Baby (both 2021) with their immaculately carved ears embedded in ‘pillows’ of red-veined marble, aren’t just strange; they have an inherent strangeness on their own terms. Both artists have a conceptual intent, referentiality, sensitivity to materials, and history of delving into notions of the body, metamorphosis, nature, memory and mythology that belies the inclusion of their works as mere ‘curiosities’. Monster Chetwynd’s handmade, oversized moths, constructed from cardboard, paint and latex, have been an abiding presence in her sprawling installations and ecstatic performances, but, here, clinging onto the gallery walls and devoid of any curatorial context, they appear as facsimiles of outsider art. Similarly, it’s hard to know what Sarah Lucas’ suspended assemblages of stuffed tights, plastic buckets and lounge
chairs are supposed to contribute, other than a general atmosphere of abject deflation. Given that ‘Kunstkammer’ largely eschews an overall contextualisation of the collective works as well as written descriptions of the individual objects, the inference is that their selection is largely determined by taste, an intuitive a(nity for the bizarre or unexpected. !at’s not necessarily a complaint: historical wunderkammers have themselves revolved around the often-unarticulated preferences of their owners. Yet, as a ‘re-invention of the genre’, the exhibition feels tentative, even restrained. It is caught between its own Scylla and Charybdis, neither willing to commit to a more taxonomical display of its contents – a ‘making sense’ of the otherwise incommensurable – or to diving headlong into its eccentricities through an immersive, overwhelming, pell-mell profusion of artefacts. !e straight path isn’t generally the most interesting one.
Chris Clarke is a critic and curator based between Cork and Vienna. ) Mark A. Meadow and Bruce Robertson (Eds. and
trans.), The First Treatise on Museums: Samuel Quiccheberg’s Inscriptiones 1565 (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2013). 2 Gabriel Kaltemarckt, ‘How a Kunstkammer should be formed’ (1587) reproduced in Journal of the History of Collections, Volume 2, Issue 1, 1990, pp. 1–6.
Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2025
Critique
Critique
Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2025
Maria Fusco and Margaret Salmon, ‘History of the Present’ Golden Thread Gallery 15 February – 29 March 2025 MARIA FUSCO AND Margaret Salmon’s internationally
acclaimed opera-film, History of the Present (2023), was shown in exhibition format at Golden !read Gallery (GTG), Belfast, earlier this year. Mary Stevens, GTG Exhibition O(cer, with Fusco and Salmon created a site-specific installation to accompany the film, which included artworks, research material from the GTG archive, personal artefacts, and ephemera. In a related coincidence, the gallery is currently located in the building that was once Craftworld, a shop Fusco remembers visiting as a child. !is adds another layer of connection and intimacy to an exhibition that has deep resonance within the Belfast context. Filmed in Belfast in 2022, using 35mm film and video, History of the Present opens with a close-up of opera singer, Héloïse Werner, whose improvisational vocal work is transforming archival recordings of the ambient noises of !e Troubles. Channelling the soundscape of war – sirens, helicopters, explosions, and so on – via the human voice, Werner’s vocalisations have an unsettling yet riveting effect. !is dramatic – and yes, operatic – opening establishes an overarching inquiry of embodied human suffering that struggles to find expression. !emes of silencing and censorship, particularly of women and working-class communities, are found throughout Salmon’s inventive filming, and in Fusco’s deeply personal libretto. A collaborative work, History of the Present is a ‘total work of art’ or Gesamtkunstwerk in the Wagnerian sense. It utilises a range of elements, including composer Annea Lockwood’s tremendous soundscapes, personal experience, abstracted images, disembodied voices, and vocal recordings to express subjective realities. !e artwork title reflects philosopher Michel Foucault’s view that the ‘history of the present’ should be the starting point for an enquiry into the past. In that spirit, the cinematography concentrates on images of contemporary Belfast, while Fusco’s libretto provides a present-time reflection on her experiences growing up in Ardoyne during !e Troubles.
Working-class areas and the women of those communities bore the brunt of the violence and hardship of the conflict; yet in the grand narrative, such voices are rarely heard. As the libretto states: “All across Belfast, all of us, always watching in silence.” Saying nothing became a way of life, a survival strategy. Libretto, cinematography, and soundscape each work in unison to convey that lived reality. !e spoken words from the libretto are all the more powerful because they are devoid of overt polemic or rhetoric. At one point, the disembodied voice delivers a quietly spoken litany of experiences of daily life, played out against a backdrop of existential threat. Especially moving is the recounting of the journey home from school, experiencing harassment and fear, and keeping quiet so as not to upset a parent. In this, and the other deeply affecting accounts of growing up in a war zone, the personal is political. Salmon’s cinematography is sensitive and moving. Images of Ardoyne show contemporary daily life in all its ordinariness, yet the residue of the conflict is visible on people’s faces, and in the physical landscape. Its legacy is reinforced by images of the peace lines or peace walls – physical manifestations of sectarian division and distrust. An aerial shot of rows of identical red brick terraced houses, divided by an imposing peace wall, conveys this very powerfully. Equally impactful is the recurring motif of the red brick, “with its three cast holes, sustained by water and hardened by history” (as described in the libretto), which becomes a metaphor for both entrenched positions and human resilience. !ere are several moments of visual beauty, such as a lingering image of the peace wall which has been given gradient colours by the opaque glass of a domestic backdoor. !is and other images remind us of how !e Troubles encroached on the most private of spaces and relationships. History of the Present ends with an image of Belfast Port at night, as the camera tracks slowly, almost imperceptibly, across the screen. A soothing voice gives
directions that are fine and precise. !e effect is calming – comforting, even – ushering a de-escalation of the heightened emotions so beautifully and sensitively evoked by this compelling work. Mary Flanagan Roscommon.
is a writer based in County
[Both Images]: Maria Fusco and Margaret Salmon, ‘History of the Present’, installation view, Golden Thread Gallery; photograph by Simon Mills, courtesy of the artists and Golden Thread Gallery.
Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2025
Critique
Maria Atanacković and Tony O’Malley, ‘The Shape of Memory’ Graphic Studio Gallery, Dublin 1 February – 8 March 2025 IN PRINTMAKING, THE thing seen – the
most visible layer – is not what the artist has made. Painting has a version of this dichotomy – the application of paint reveals and conceals at the same time – but in printmaking, the viewer is denied a direct encounter with the made object, the matrix itself, and presented with a version of it, a reflection or afterimage, a material ghost. If I’m labouring the point, it’s because in this two-person exhibition, what’s seen directly and what’s available as clue or implication seem at play between the different artworks themselves. That, and the fact that Tony O’Malley’s work is finished (he died in 2003), while Maria Atanacković’s work continues as a going concern. O’Malley’s abstraction is rooted in landscape, in the school of St. Ives, for example, but also in numerous Irish peers and predecessors. His home patch was Kilkenny, but his carborundum prints have exotic titles like Haria and Isla de Graciosa – Canary Island locations with sunny, relatively unencumbered visions of the natural world. His multi-plate, printed surfaces are compressed, with varying degrees of texture and translucence, enabling overlapping marks to retain a semblance of autonomy within their complex, visual fields. Atanacković’s screenprints are flat. Without modulation of hue or application, they rely on juxtaposition for their visual excitement. A title like Intervals of Quiet prompts thoughts of meditation or graphic scores, but parallel arrangements of variously coloured stripes equally suggest quilt-making. Atanacković applies colour dispassionately. She’s not interested in bodily gestures, but in the relationship of parts. With a background in textiles, and a penchant for clothing and other artistic applications, her complex shapeshifting also suggests a kind of aesthetic utility, functioning best in relation to other things. In relation to O’Malley, her work seems more analytical and less felt, but that’s close to a tautology when so much of her work happens through mechanical processes. Two large works on stretched linen are described as ‘reactive prints’. New to me, this is seemingly the result of digital files being transferred to the fabric and fixed by heat. In Fragments of a Gesture, differently shaped and coloured elements crowd within their right-angled format. The result is compositionally balanced, but there seems little else at stake. It’s unfair to wish for something unavailable, but I’d love to see how this handsome patternmaking might respond to being fashioned in three dimensions. Closer to this idea, if not quite sculptural either, wallbased, plywood assemblages of individually cut and coloured segments coalesce into locked formations or bloom outwards into counterbalanced arrangements. Construct 1 is reminiscent of Jean Arp (though the versatile Sophie Taeuber-Arp seems more relevant to the overall practice), while Barbara Hepworth came to mind in a series of related screenprints with curved elements, balancing circles and oblongs into a sculptural tension. O’Malley liked working with discarded materials, making totem-like objects from
lengths of wood, nails and string. Often resembling crude musical instruments, their ritualistic quality is most evident in a series of Good Friday paintings, made on the eponymous day and bearing suitable analogies. On behalf of Graphic Studio Dublin, James O’Nolan and James McCreary made regular trips to O’Malley’s Callan studio in the late 1990s, where mixtures of carborundum paste enabled him to apply his painterly methods directly onto plastic plates. The results were proofed back in Dublin, with the painter’s wishes interpreted through colour notes and conversations. On some very large plates, O’Malley worked outside in the garden, swapping his paint brushes for a sweeping brush. Firenze II, with broad swathes of pink, orange and black, its aerial perspective tethered with scratchy lines, is simply gorgeous. If O’Malley’s graphic work lacks something of the tangible materiality of his work in painting and mixed media, this is countered by a gained luminosity, the sunlight that so preoccupied him captured within the printed folds. While the exhibition sets up abstraction as a shared language, the tendency to abstract from the natural landscape, or towards universal forms, is the essential difference. ‘The Shape of Memory’ may refer to how artists conjure images from mental states, but also, perhaps, how material can recall its former shape after technological processes. Though made at different times, all prints here are undated, as though preserving them against chronology and its associated decay. This seems an unnecessary caution, because in the best examples of printmaking, what we see and what has been are equally present. John Graham is a Dublin-based artist and writer. johngraham.ie
[Top]: Tony O’Malley, Aeolus, carborundum; photograph by Peter Brennan, courtesy of the artist’s estate and Graphic Studio Gallery. [Bottom]: Maria Atanacković [L-R]: Fragments of A Gesture, Intervals of Being, reactive print on linen; photograph by Peter Brennan, courtesy of the artist and Graphic Studio Gallery.
Critique
Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2025
Daniel Tuomey, ‘Stuck, a decomposition’ Ormston House 21 February – 26 April 2025 IN SAMUEL BECKETT’S dramatic mono-
logue, Not I (1972), the central character, Mouth, stretches the limits of language, being, and experience. In all her fragility and fragmentation, Mouth seemingly does not make much sense. Yet within her staccato speech, things are revealed, even if they are not communicated; we bear witness to a wide variety of breakdowns across body, identity, and language. !ere is no resolution in Not I – just an expectation that the voice will keep looping, even after the curtain comes down. Arguably, Daniel Tuomey’s recent solo exhibition at Ormston House, ‘Stuck, a decomposition’, takes influence from Beckett’s play, not only in the inclusion of the words “Not I” within the artist’s charcoal drawings, but also in its entropic essence. !at is, Tuomey’s show is largely an inquiry into disintegration: of speech, space, and senses of self. Using interdisciplinary mediums and methodologies – from architectural drawings to an invocation of balladry – Tuomey’s work deconstructs and reconstructs space and voice, breaking them down again and again. ‘Stuck, a decomposition’ follows the disembodied monologue of a narrator, trapped in the chimney of a Georgian townhouse, trying to make sense of the claustrophobic feeling of perpetuity. !e narrator poses rhetorical questions to the audience: Where do we come from? Where might we begin and end? Where might we be going, if the paths keep changing towards an ever more precarious future? Tuomey’s work, in part, reflects what Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi refers to as the “slow cancellation of the future,” whereby time has been constricted and impacted by capitalism, so much so that imagining a future is now impossible. Instead, we find ourselves stuck, struggling to find meaning or hope that things will improve. Our narrator reminds us that “this is a crisis, by the way”, and while drawn to understanding its root cause, is also interested in the nuanced transformation of Georgian spaces, and the power structures that have historically controlled language usage in Ireland. !ough Tuomey’s familial connections to Limerick permeate the show, the Treaty City also typifies the ‘austerity conservation’ of Georgian buildings, in which developers, landlords, and local authorities deploy glorified narratives of ‘heritage’ to stimulate external capital investment, with few material, social, or cultural benefits for the local community. One thing is said that means another; the tenses shift, history is transmogrified. !is is further highlighted through the artist’s use of randomised voice and visual patterns. A series of wall-mounted drawings, titled Pucaí (2024-25), speaks to the shapeshifting quality of the eponymous Irish mythological figure. Tuomey’s audio-visual work, An explanation (2025), attempts to detail a genealogy of voice and culture, but also undoes itself through its self-editing software, constantly reordering the narratives that question its own authenticity and ownership. !e episodes emanate from the chimney sculpture, Stack (202425), merging the body with the architecture,
leaving only a voice that is both distinctly Irish and not Irish. !is voice does not seem to know its own origins, and struggles to speak. Tuomey appears to follow Frederic Jameson’s call to ‘always historicise’ by unsettling the presumed ‘naturalness’ of decomposition, and instead considers how ‘decay’ – cultural, economic, spatial, linguistic, and so on – is controlled and orchestrated. Tuomey references this in a multitude of ways, from creating Stack in the exact measurements of his body, to his choreographed movements on opening night, which included conducting the audience to move in unison around the gallery space. Overall, Tuomey’s exhibition deals conceptually with haunting, and what remains when everything is taken away. It plays upon Irish cultural memory and our enduring anxieties around property, as well as notions of authentic personhood. !e work seems to respond to the notion that Romantic Ireland – envisioned in her gendered representations – is dead but not gone. Instead, she might visit us in our shrinking spaces – box rooms, converted basements, chimneys – in all her different forms, sometimes speaking in our shared tongues, and sometimes rendered mute. Dr El Reid-Buckley is a researcher, writer and creative facilitator from Limerick City.
Daniel Tuomey presents a performative walkthrough at the opening of ‘Stuck, a decomposition’; photograph courtesy of the artist and Ormston House.
Daniel Tuomey, Table I (The bourgeoisie size you up from their dark holes), 2025, fired ceramics, cutting board, lighting element, cardboard models, found table; photograph by Jed Niezgoda, courtesy the artist and Ormston House.
Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2025
Critique
[Top]: ‘Stuck, a decomposition’, installation view, Ormston House, March 2025; photograph by Jed Niezgoda, courtesy of the artist and Ormston House. [Bottom]: Daniel Tuomey presents a performative walkthrough at the opening of ‘Stuck, a decomposition’; photograph courtesy of the artist and Ormston House.
Critique
Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2025
Rich Gilligan ‘The First Draft’ Draíocht 19 February – 3 May 2025 First Draft at Draíocht sees the artist curate and revise his extensive body of work, both artistic and commercial, in a gallery setting for the first time. !e Amharc Fhine Gall exhibition commission has allowed Gilligan to revisit his archive and his origins in and around Blanchardstown.) ‘!e First Draft’ may not, in the main, be directly derived from the local area, but it presents the work of a photographer whose aesthetic and method were born in the surrounding streets and estates. Outside of his commercial work, Gilligan is best known for his skateboard-related photography. His book, DIY (19/80 Éditions, 2013), for example, catalogues skater places across the world and finds in them commonalities – despite the obvious territorial and cultural differences in the myriad of places he has visited – whether a style, an attitude, or a shared take on the urban/suburban experience. Skaters are both part of their cities and exist at a slant to it. !ey use the urban environment in ways that critique the banality of city and suburban living and yet are dependent on and cherishes it. !ere is something creatively makeshift and independent about skate culture that is crucial to Gilligan’s photographs. His regard for the street, for concrete and tarmac, along with a sense that skating is pushing against constraints, is at the centre of the kind of photographic practice which Gilligan has made for himself. One of new pieces exhibited here is Linger, a looped digital film work from 2024, which is taken up with the cycle of a carwash, as seen from inside the car. Sitting on one of the elongated sides of a triangular prism structure in the middle of the gallery, Linger becomes a series of fluid abstracts made from the water, suds and drying air of the carwash. !e piece shifts between something deeply ordinary to something much more mysterious and elemental yet always manufactured. In its textures and colours, it works as if the ethos and the constituent parts of the photographs on the walls have been condensed into this sequence. On other side of the prism is another film piece, Untitled (2017), which follows a skateboarder down a street in Williamsburg, New York. !e black and white of the film is echoed and accentuated by the monochrome clothing of the Orthodox Jews and other pedestrians whom the skater passes by. !e film poses questions about the relationship between the skater and those walking on and off the pavement – whether they are all equally street inhabitants or flâneurs, or whether the skater lives apart form, and in critique of, the pavement walkers. Taking these two works together, as they look out across the gallery towards the photographs on the walls, gives a strong guide to Gilligan’s work here. He is interested in the shapes, patterns, colours and visual sensations of city life, and he is drawn to the actual and implicit stories of those who live and find a way to play in urban environments. !e walls of the Draíocht gallery include sequences of work from Gilligan’s back catalogue, arranged so as to create an atmoRICH GILLIGAN’S ‘THE
sphere, or series of atmospheres, of urban life. !e first skateboarding images from Birmingham and Dublin flank a bonfire at Mountview (very much signalling the importance of the locale) from 2004, and between these is a puddle on tarmac in London from 2011, reflecting the sun in a cloudy sky and echoing the light and water imagery of Linger across the way. !e other works in the gallery follow this pattern, with light – and therefore a kind of tender hopefulness – being a common motif in the petting of a horse, lit from behind by the sun, kids watching a bonfire, or sunlight on a bush in New York. Gilligan’s work, consistently through the two decades covered in ‘!e First Draft’, takes the energy, independence and creativity of the skateboarder as its foundation, seeing an urban world, full of contained possibility and dignity. Colin Graham is a writer, farmer, and Professor of English at Maynooth University. ) Rich Gilligan ‘!e First Draft’ is the 13th edition
of Amharc Fhine Gall (!e Fingal Gaze) – an exhibition programme initiated in 2004 by Fingal County Council Arts O(ce, in collaboration with Draíocht, to celebrate the work of Fingal artists at all career stages.
[All Images]: Rich Gilligan, ‘The First Draft’, installation view, Draíocht; photographs © and courtesy of the artist.
THE JOURNAL OF FINE ART, DESIGN, ARCHITECTURE, PHOTOGRAPHY, SCULPTURE, HERITAGE, DECORATIVE ARTS AND CRAFTS
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Image: Lines of Engagement: Threshold/Oil on canvas/70 x 60 cm/2023
Lines of Engagement Recent Paintings
Works by Eddie Kennedy 31st May - 28th June Gallery Opening Hours: Tues - Fri: 10am - 5pm | Sat: 2pm - 5pm thesourceartscentre.ie | @sourcearts
Barbara Freeman: A Retrospective F.E. McWilliam Gallery & Studio 14 June 2025 - 27 September 2025 ADMISSION: FREE // p028 4062 332 // wfemcwilliam.com
Barbara Freeman, Time Past Remembered 11, Inkjet print, 46 x 36, 2025
20 Kerry Artists Phase 2: new works Until 18 June 2025
Full details at grilse.ie
Free entry all welcome 7 May 5.30pm Radio Kerry’s Joe McGill in conversation with artists Lisa Fingleton Alan Raggett Rochelle Lucey Robert Carter
Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport & Media Government Offices, New Road Killarney V93 A49X. 10am–5pm, Mon–Fri
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Fingal, A Place for Art
Are you interested in how Art & Design shapes our world? NCAD has a course for you!
Fingal County Council and Draíocht Studio Residency Award 2025 Fingal County Council Arts Office in partnership with Draíocht, is offering a 4-month paid residency in Draíocht’s Artist Studio from September to December 2025. Included is the cost of studio rental and administration, a fee of €4000 for the 4-month period, and an additional €1,000 for material costs.
MA/MFA Art in the Contemporary World Applications are Open Both courses offer part-time and full-time options Enquiries: admissions@ncad.ie
Closing date for applications is Friday 27th June 2025 at 4.00pm
www.fingalarts.ie www.fingal.ie/arts
Announcing our New Part-time BA Visual Culture
To be eligible to apply, applicants must: have been born, have studied, or currently reside in the Fingal administrative area.
To apply and find out more, visit: www.draiocht.ie For further information email: emer@draiocht.ie
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Exhibition Profile
Visual Artists’ News Sheet | May – June 2025
Production of He, Joe, 1966; image © SWR / Hugo Jehle, courtesy of Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart.
IN A TIME when images and their contexts are consumed and
On Television, Beckett ANTONIA HELD REVIEWS A RECENT EXHIBITION AT WÜRTTEMBERGISCHER KUNSTVEREIN STUTTGART.
forgotten in the blink of an eye, the question arises: Are we still capable of truly looking? As streaming services flood us with endless content, and algorithms dictate our viewing behaviour, reality becomes increasingly blurred. It is worth pausing and reflecting on an artist who not only utilised the medium of television but radically questioned it: Samuel Beckett. !e exhibition ‘On Television, Beckett’ at the Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart (19 October 2024 – 12 January 2025) presented for the first time all seven television plays that Samuel Beckett produced between 1966 and 1985 for the South German Broadcasting Corporation (SDR, now SWR) in Stuttgart: He Joe (1966), Geister Trio (1977), … nur noch Gewölk … (1977), Quadrat I and II (1981), Nacht und Träume (1982), and Was Wo (1985). Curated by Gerard Byrne and Judith Wilkinson, the exhibition highlighted Beckett as a visual artist, portraying him as a precise designer of his works. Newly discovered photographs and production documents from the SWR Historical Archive, which document Beckett’s creative process over three decades, demonstrate that Beckett was not only an author but also deeply involved in the direction, visual composition, and editing of his films – pushing the boundaries of television as an artistic medium. His minimalist yet innovative aesthetic infused the medium with new depth and solidified his status as a visionary artist. In the expansive exhibition space of the Kunstverein, the film works were projected within four cubes, which together formed an open, slightly offset fifth space, resembling a courtyard, the design of which borrows from Geistertrio. !is was supplemented by two CRT monitors, one displaying Beckett’s film, Film (1965), the other a part of Alexander Kluge’s Deutschland im Herbst (1978),
Visual Artists’ News Sheet | May – June 2025
alongside a conversation with Otto Schily – lawyer for the far-left militant group, Red Army Faction (RAF) – and Eberhard Itzenplitz’s 1970 film, Bambule, which had originally been written by RAF member, Ulrike Meinhof, and therefore had for some time been banned from broadcast. !e exhibition vividly connected Beckett’s collaboration with SDR to the political history of Stuttgart. During the German Autumn of 1977, when the city was in the international spotlight, due to the actions of the RAF and the Stammheim trials, Geister Trio and … nur noch Gewölk … were created. Beckett’s themes – isolation, repetition, and the search for meaning – reflect the societal tensions of that time and touch on questions of freedom, control, and existence. In Beckett’s television plays, he employed a radical reduction that questioned the very nature of the medium itself. !at contemporary artists continue to engage with these works not only shows Beckett’s enduring relevance but also underscores the transformation and evolution of the media landscape since then. !is was impressively addressed and expanded upon in the artists’ talks on 11 January. !e event included a conversation between Declan Clarke and Gerard Byrne about Clarke’s new film, If I Fall, Don’t Pick Me Up (2024), which had been shown to the audience the previous evening. Known for his cinematic investigations into modernity, conflict, and the hidden stories behind historical upheavals, Clarke brings a narrative sensitivity that can be compared to Beckett’s storytelling. While Beckett used television as a medium to abstract movements and question the structure of time, Clarke does something similar in his cinematic examinations of history and ideology. Another engagement with Beckett’s ideas was found in the works of Doireann O’Malley, who merges virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and 3D technologies with cinematic and installation techniques. While Beckett explored television as a technological frontier, altering perceptions of body and space, O’Malley starts from a similar point, but in a world where machine intelligence and digital identities are already part of our daily lives. In their conversation with Judith Wilkinson, it became clear that their works address not only media transformations but also identity, gender, and perception, reflecting the changing narrative strategies in art. Beckett’s characters, often caught between dissolution and repetition, thus find a modern counterpart in O’Malley’s explorations of fluid identities and alternative states of consciousness. !e programme also addressed the artistic research projects of 2014 Turner Prize winner, Duncan Campbell, and the subsequent conversation between the artist and the curator bridged Beckett’s work with the present, opening up space for discussions. Campbell’s films, which deal with historical figures and political topics, explore the boundaries between documentary truth and narrative construction. !is approach recalls Beckett’s staging of language and memory; where Beckett used forgetting, unreliability, and fragmentation as narrative strategies, Campbell questions the mechanisms by which history is constructed and passed down. Just as Beckett blended absurdity and seriousness, Campbell works with the tensions between documentary accuracy and narrative manipulation. In both, what appears as fact often remains a subjective and manipulable representation of reality. ‘On Television, Beckett’ made clear, through its combination of archival research, a comprehensive presentation of Beckett’s works, and conversations involving contemporary artistic reflections, that creative innovation often arises not from an abundance of possibilities, but from the conscious limitation to the essential – an idea more relevant than ever in times of information overload and manipulative media strategies. Perhaps herein lies answers to the yearning for authenticity in an increasingly simulated world. Beckett showed us the way – now it is up to us to truly look and continue his gaze. Antonia Held is an art historian based in Stuttgart, Germany.
Exhibition Profile
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[Top]: Production of Nacht und Träume, 1982; [Middle]: Samuel Beckett, … nur noch Gewölk …, 1977; [Bottom]: Samuel Beckett, He, Joe, 1966; images © SWR / Hugo Jehle, courtesy of Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart.
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Visual Artists’ News Sheet | May – June 2025
Exhibition Profile
An Urban Atmosphere JOSEPHINE KELLIHER REFLECTS ON THE PRACTICE OF MICHAEL KANE.
MICHAEL KANE WAS among the first artists to join the
fledgling Rubicon Gallery in 1990. We worked together intensively for 25 years and continue to collaborate. Michael’s exhibition ‘Works on Paper’ at Taylor Galleries (22 May – 21 June) coincides with his 90th birthday, so this is an ideal moment for me to reflect on the specific characteristics and narratives of his work. The Labour of Creativity For decades, Michael’s home in Waterloo Road was his studio – or his studio was his home. !ere, I encountered a factory of creativity, a place of doers and makers. Michael alternated between the barely defined borders of his studio and living spaces, while his daughter, Aoife, and son, Oisin, worked separately on their own projects. Each had a private workspace, and everyone’s endeavour felt equally important; results and outcomes were shared and marvelled at collectively. In my own experience, creative projects were not often validated and categorised as ‘labour’ at that time. Similarly, ‘labour’ was not seen as creative, and the uneven process of creative labour was rarely the subject of animated conversation between adult and child. I observed there, Michael’s view on the imagination as a sacred space for creativity, a territory worth defending, in which information and emotions collage into something greater than the sum of those parts. Michael works every day; he doesn’t wait for inspiration or any special circumstances. Michael wears work clothes, and he takes breaks for food, errands, periods of reading or news, but keeps these short. He’s intolerant of unscheduled interruptions. Michael has several projects on the go and is always starting new things. He assembles and manipulates materials and imagery; by sheer effort and trust in the process, his big bold paintings are laboriously coaxed into being. Michael’s perspective and regard for his own labour explains his choice of subjects. Many monumental pieces portray the nobility, resilience and value of people engaged in physical labour and he celebrates mechanics, construction workers, stevedores, and factory workers as much as he does poets, gods and athletes. Michael’s imagery is enriched by his reading, which he dismisses as “unscholarly and unsystematic,” although his autobiography, BLIND DOGS: A Personal History (Gandon Editions, 2023) chronicles an impressive reading list, already completed in his teens. Michael’s fluency in ancient Greek and Roman literature is an important context for his work – from the series ‘Agamemnon Felled’ to others exploring the fates of Icarus, Marsyas, Narcissus and more. He also published original poems informed by the classics: REALMS (1974) and IF IT’S TRUE (2005). !e Greeks saw their gods as utterly fallible, whose desires, ego and hubris are just like our own. Michael’s gods are full of struggle; they are sometimes depicted god-like, roaming the city, and sometimes appear in their ordinary human form. His interest in literature is balanced with an insatiable appetite for news, and both inform Michael’s understandings of human nature. Places and People Born in county Wicklow, Micheal wanted access to the bigger world of his imagination and, in many crucial ways, he found that in Dublin. !e city is the backdrop for so many works that he has been described as a painter of urban spaces. Speaking with curator Seán Kissane in 2008, Michael said: “I don’t think I do urban landscapes as such. I do versions of an urban atmosphere, or something like that.”
Arriving in Dublin in his twenties, Michael interacted with writers Brendan Behan, Anthony Cronin and Patrick Kavanagh, painters James McKenna, Alice Hanratty, John Kelly, Charlie Cullen and Micheal Cullen, and several musicians, including Ronnie Drew and others in !e Dubliners. Dublin was where Michael found his community of creatives and formed the “first inkling” of the possibility of life as a professional artist. Michael also invested in building an ecosystem to support other artists. In the 70s he founded the sociopolitical magazine, Structure, commissioning original writing and art from young creatives. He established Independent Artists, an alternative to the rigid, prevailing gallery system, and was co-founder of Project Art Centre, a radical arts venue in Temple Bar. Michael was among the first members of Aosdána. So, while it’s true that Michael was drawn to Dublin as a place, it was the community, world vision, and sense that creatives could live collectively that kept him in the city. Feminism and Tenderness Michael often paints women. He is interested in the ways that women show up in the world and is aware of how the world shows up for women. His female subjects are mothers, gods, labourers, lovers, artists, survivors, students, and sex workers – each depiction, though complex, is wholly unambiguous. !e women in his paintings squarely stare down or dismiss the viewer as they go about their business. Michael never depicts women in fanciful poses; they assert themselves in the picture plane as they might assert themselves in a world that is often neither fair nor easy. He catalogues a malevolent cast of male characters circling these women – from the leering elders around the biblical Susanna to fiendish predators Michael recalls from twentieth-century Ireland. !ere is real tenderness in small drawings, watercolours and prints of women and girls that address violence, abuse, and cover-ups by church, school, and society. Many stories from this period recur in works throughout his career, never forgotten nor fully resolved. When I started Rubicon Gallery, I was 21 years old, and a recent graduate. Michael was 55, a senior art college lecturer, and an established artist and cultural figure. I never felt less than Michael’s equal; business and creative directions were all up for discussion. I was invited to offer robust points of view, however contrary to his own, and together we negotiated solutions. Visual artists often won’t describe what they plan to do; meaning percolates through in the making. Sometimes it’s challenging to reduce what is done to plain words, because these things are often part of a longer unfinished body of work. Working with an artist over several years, I see that glimmers of insight emerge between the cracks and meaning coalesces over time. I am privileged for the time I spend with Michael in his studio, and for his personal humour and the stories that illuminate the work. Josephine Kelliher works internationally as a Curator, Art Advisor and Cultural Strategist. Michael Kane’s exhibition ‘Works on Paper’ runs at Taylor Galleries from 22 May to 21 June. taylorgalleries.ie
Michael’s work is also being shown in ‘Staying with the Trouble’ at IMMA (2 May – 21 September). imma.ie
Michael Kane [Top]: Red-Haired Woman, 2024, Acrylic on Paper, 42x30cm; [Bottom]: Small Street with a Crane, 2024, acrylic on paper, 42x30cm; images courtesy of the artist and Taylor Galleries.
Visual Artists’ News Sheet | May – June 2025
Exhibition Profile
Problems of To-day
Pliable Planes
LEAH CORBETT DISCUSSES HER ARTWORK, RECENTLY PRESENTED AT CCA DERRY~LONDONDERRY.
EMILY WASZAK OUTLINES HER PARTICIPATION IN ‘URGENCIES’ AT CCA DERRY~LONDONDERRY.
OLDPARK LIBRARY, which opened in 1906, was one of three libraries in Belfast to receive funding through grants from Andrew Carnegie between 1905 and 1909. Carnegie, an industrialist and philanthropist, funded over 2500 libraries around the world, 66 of which were in Ireland. Carnegie Oldpark Library was the starting point for my recent work, Problems of To-day (2025), presented as part of ‘URGENCIES (2025)’ in CCA Derry~Londonderry (18 January – 15 March 2025). ‘URGENCIES’ is a biennial exhibition which highlights work by emerging artists responding to pressing issues, ranging from climate change to healthcare. I first visited the Carnegie Oldpark Library during a hard hat tour in 2023. !e building was abandoned by the public sector in 2010 but retains many of its elegant original features, including the woodwork, plaster, cornicing, and metalwork. !e building was bought by Quintin Oliver and Fiona MacMillan in 2015 who, together with the Northern Ireland Foundation, are working to secure funds to restore the building and develop a Centre for Weaving Excellence. In the meantime, the building offers a temporary home to a small number of artists and local community groups. I spent time there on residency in 2024, documenting the architecture and remaining library infrastructure, searching through old books, and drawing. !e library is an ongoing reference within my work as a beacon of collectivity, community, and shared resources. In 2020, I presented The Library of Common Knowledge in Catalyst Arts in Belfast – a temporary library made up of books donated through an open call, which was available for visitors to use. Problems of To-day is a series of banners and an accompanying bookmark which emerged from my time in residence at the former Carnegie Oldpark Library. Responding to the context of the library as a space dedicated to words, the work began with a collection of phrases drawn from my research of Carnegie. !ese phrases were translated into a series of drawings on CARNEGIE
paper which I made with thick, black marker in a playful, graphic style, inspired by old hand-painted signs and satirical cartoons. !e drawings were printed on fabric and presented in the CCA gallery as banners, evoking protest and resistance. !e bookmark, which I made in the same style, was distributed to libraries across Derry and Belfast. When Oldpark Library opened in 1906, Carnegie was one of the wealthiest men in the world. He made his fortune in the steel industry, earning a reputation for violent labour disputes. Two of the banners feature the phrases “Let Grass Grow Over Works” and “Silence is Best,” which reference Carnegie’s treatment of his workers, in particular his response to the Homestead Steel Works Strike in 1892, during which his refusal to meet the workers’ demands led to the deaths of ten people and left hundreds injured. !e closure of the Carnegie Oldpark Library in 2010 coincided with the closing of nine other libraries across Belfast. In recent years, Libraries NI services have faced renewed threats from funding cuts with a £1.7m shortfall in funding for 2023/24. !is has led to libraries operating with reduced hours and lacking the means to purchase new books. Carnegie, who was a hero of capitalism, framed philanthropy as an alternative to the redistribution of wealth. He strongly condemned socialism, claiming instead that inequality could be improved by acts of charity. But what is a public library without new books? Problems of To-day highlights political inaction and the failures of capitalism to prioritise public services and infrastructure. Libraries are important civic spaces where communities can gather and gain access to knowledge, information, and services. !e public library is one of the few remaining free spaces that operate outside of the profit motive and must urgently be supported and protected. Leah Corbett is an artist and curator from Tipperary. leahcorbett.net
Leah Corbett, Problems of To-day, 2025, installation view, ‘URGENCIES (2025)’; photograph by Paola Bernardelli, courtesy of the artist and CCA Derry~Londonderry.
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Emily Waszak, Pliable Planes, 2025, installation view, ‘URGENCIES (2025)’; photograph by Paola Bernardelli, courtesy of the artist and CCA Derry~Londonderry.
IT WAS AN honour to have my mixed-me-
dia sculptures, Pliable Planes (2025), selected and shown as part of ‘URGENCIES (2025)’ (18 January – 15 March) – the fourth edition of CCA Derry~Londonderry’s biennial group exhibition of emerging artists, connected to the northwest region of Ireland. Pliable Planes responds to architectural ruin in urban landscapes. Small textiles were woven in response to the decay of the architectural structures, creating what Anni Albers referred to as a ‘pliable plane’ of interlacing threads.) !ese weavings were then joined with discarded building materials, found in Derry, to create new sculptural forms. It is a small architectural intervention that reimagines the ruin as a site of creative regeneration, facilitated by the soft power of textiles. !e textile is a technology created as a flexible, responsive and moveable structure that we can take on the move and literally wear on our bodies. Whether due to conflict, the climate crisis, or other unfolding global catastrophes, our need to be able to pick up and go at a moment’s notice looms large. As a city divided physically and politically by a river, Derry is vulnerable to these events. !is work looks to textiles as a potential solution. Pliable Planes is a kind of votive shrine, imagining the decaying recesses of built structures as niches in which to place these small weavings – textiles that serve as offerings, a symbol of an ancient technology with the capacity for repair, reimagining new worlds on the ashes of the old. !e weavings are made of fancy yarns, selected for their resonances with the colours, art and architecture of the city, including the open surfaces of ruin and repair. !e textiles are not meant to camouflage the ruins, but to be situated amongst them. Pliable Planes is a work conceived while mediating the Irish Pavillion at the Venice Biennale in 2024, as a situated response to living and working among ruin and ritual. Despite my lack of studio access during this period, I felt compelled to begin making small-scale weavings as ritual offerings to ruin, serving as both physical objects
and conceptual frameworks for addressing the looming problem of how to build new worlds among the ruins of late-stage Racial Capitalism.2 !e work is underpinned by the urgency to respond to the climate catastrophe, which is perhaps more tangible and visible in Venice than in Ireland, but a crisis affecting all of us, nonetheless. !is response also unfolded amidst the news of devastating floods caused by Hurricane Helene in my home state of North Carolina in the US, which has heightened my sense of urgency in making this work. Upon returning to Donegal and Derry, I further developed and produced the final works using the same process as the one I developed in Venice but situated in the specificity of the Derry urban landscape. !ese small sculptures are installed quietly in the gallery among other thoughtful, urgent artworks in this exhibition. !ough this work is large in concept, it is diminutive in form, pointing to the small objects, moments, and acts that often get overlooked in our era of acceleration. !ough capitalism and the climate crisis can feel so overwhelming that we feel paralysed and unable to act, I offer these small sculptural interventions as a starting place from which to imagine and build new worlds. And as exiled American political activist, Assata Shakur, reminds us, “a wall is just a wall.”+ Emily Waszak is a visual artist of Japanese descent based in Donegal. @emily.waszak.art
) See: Anni Albers, ‘!e Pliable Plane: Textiles in
Architecture’ in Marshall Meyers (Ed.), PERSPECTA 4: THE YALE ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL (New Haven, CT: Departments of Architecture and Design, Yale University, 1957). 2 Racial Capitalism was coined by Black Studies professor, Cedric James Robinson, to describe the history of capitalism as being grounded in the extraction of social and economic value from Black and other marginalised communities. See: Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (London: Zed Press, 1983). + Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Press, 1988).
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Visual Artists’ News Sheet | May – June 2025
Organisation Profile
PhotoIreland PHOTOIRELAND ANNOUNCE THE NEW INTERNATIONAL CENTRE FOR THE IMAGE.
Launch of the ‘FUTURES ENERGY’ exhibition in North Wall, Dublin, 2024; photograph by Evanna Devine, courtesy of PhotoIreland.
THIS JULY, WITH the support of Kennedy Wilson and
the Arts Council of Ireland, the International Centre for the Image will launch in Dublin’s North Wall. !e centre is the manifestation of PhotoIreland’s public-facing research, carried out since 2017 through our Critical Academy project, which worked towards the development of a forward-looking museum. At its core, this space would be informed by twenty-first-century ideas around equality, fairness, and representation in arts practice, as much as avoiding the contradictions and failures of the museum’s historical model – around which many transformational conversations are still ongoing. !is new cultural centre consolidates PhotoIreland’s substantial portfolio of projects, built over the last 15 years, that variously investigate how images are created, distributed, and consumed, while exploring how urgent contemporary conversations can be raised through the work of artists. !e International Centre for the Image presents a unique space for artists, artforms, and audiences – PhotoIreland’s three strategic pillars, which are constituted by four main areas: research, production, exhibition, and storage. !e centre is an ecologically focused, purpose-built venue. Our specialised art library contains thousands of resource books, alongside a vast collection of photobooks, artists books, and art prints. It offers ample space to host group visits, talks, screenings, and workshops, in addition to practical facilities for everyday research. !e atelier offers comfortable artist studio spaces with private desks and storage, which are part of the
organisation’s provision for emerging and mid-career artists. It also accommodates a large workshop and process area for the production of artworks. Finally, the ample exhibition space is ready to host ambitious shows and is complemented by an art storage unit. !is new space provides us with the facilities to fulfil our aims for PhotoIreland as a holistic resource organisation. With regard to the PhotoIreland Collection, following the completion of the Heritage Council’s Museum Standards Programme for Ireland, the space will receive its accreditation, securing the longevity of the organisation’s legacy, and ensuring the ongoing conservation and enjoyment of photography in Ireland. !e location of the International Centre for the Image in Coopers Cross campus, in the heart of the Dublin Docklands, is the result of a cultural partnership between PhotoIreland and Kennedy Wilson, the real estate investment company responsible for the development of the quarter. Over a two-year period, the partnership benefited from the mediation of Claire Healy, Head of Cultural Strategy for Kennedy Wilson, until the project was consolidated in July 2024. !is level of partnership is arguably unprecedented in Ireland given its scope and process and precedes the Culture Infrastructure Toolkit launched by Dublin City Council in May 2024. !ere is clearly an appetite for new cultural spaces in Ireland, as reflected in the Arts Council plan, ‘More People. More Places. More Spaces’ – the final phase of the ten-year strategy, Making Great Art Work (20162025), which aims to increase access to the arts by creating more spaces for artistic activity and experience.
!e International Centre for the Image opens in the Docklands this summer, ahead of future cultural development in the area, recently announced by !e Arts Council in partnership with the Dublin Port Company. As an organisation, PhotoIreland spent its first decade in entrepreneurial mode, moving at speed to respond to opportunities for cultural exchange. !is energetic phase of evolution delivered a series of specialised methods and tools to better fulfil our organisational aims, which now constitute PhotoIreland’s rich portfolio of projects. At PhotoIreland, we work hard to promote the importance of photography within society, while also expanding the visual literacy and critical thinking that supports the artform. !rough our broad range of programmes, we aim to excite diverse audiences, while highlighting the work of other organisations and individuals. PhotoIreland acknowledges its advocacy role as a catalyst, connector, and resource organisation with international horizons, working with multiple partners across Europe and securing opportunities for artists at home and abroad. Pioneering a new and exciting cultural space for Ireland, the International Centre for the Image consolidates all our projects under one roof. !is space will offer new and richer ways to engage with photography and the visual arts, while expanding the discipline and empowering artists. Ángel Luis González is Director of PhotoIreland and Julia Gelezova is General Manager. photoireland.org
Visual Artists’ News Sheet | May – June 2025
VAI Event
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Mapping Stories MARIANNE O’KANE BOAL OUTLINES A RECENT MENTORSHIP PROGRAMME FOR TEN MAYO-BASED ARTISTS. CURATORIAL MENTORSHIP WAS a central
dimension of the recent Bolay Programme 2024 at the Linenhall Arts Centre in Castlebar, which was delivered in partnership with Visual Artists Ireland from November 2024 to March 2025. !e programme featured three strands of artist engagement: a curator and artist networking event; curatorial mentorship scheme; and a group exhibition in the Linenhall. !e ten participating Mayo-based artists were Jo Killalea, Anthony D. Kelly, !omas Brawn, Martina O’Connor, Davinia Johnson, Kate Kelly, Louise Hynes, Ann Conmy, Joanna Hopkins and Sharon Ní Chuilibín. !e practice of mentorship has a lengthy history. !e word itself comes from Homer’s The Odyssey, in which the character, Mentor, was an adviser of Telemachus. ‘Men’ has a Proto Indo-European root, meaning ‘to think’; while ‘mentos’ centres on ‘intent, purpose, spirit and passion’. !e fact that the word ‘mentor’ is both noun and verb is interesting, as it describes both the person who is providing guidance and the act of guidance itself. !e importance of offering time and space ‘to think’ during the mentorship process is fundamental, as it ensures there is active listening, discussion, understanding, and reflection within the mentorship relationship. Mentorship is becoming increasingly important within the visual arts and there are a range of examples in Ireland. Create established an Artist Mentor Panel in 2022 and annually provides the Artist Mentoring Award for socially engaged arts. Local authorities, such as Waterford City and County Council and Kilkenny County Council, have set up online mentoring programmes for artists. Fingal County Council’s Artist Mentoring Programme 2024/5 is currently underway, offering a year-long scheme for six artists. My approach as curatorial mentor for the Bolay Programme was informed by the meaning of ‘curator’ as ‘a guardian’ and its Latin root ‘cura’, meaning ‘to take care’. I endeavoured to bring a supportive and empathetic dimension to the guiding role of mentor. Individual mentorship sessions were designed to provide equal access and opportunity to the ten participating artists. Part of the support for artists focused on curatorial guidance regarding the shared goal of the group exhibition, which necessarily featured in all mentorship sessions. !ere was further advice and direction offered to artists based on specific areas of interest and need in their practice. !is included input on current practice and future plans, approaches to writing about one’s work, considering socio-cultural relevance, and professional development recommendations. Each artist’s session was tailored to their individual needs to ensure it was relevant and useful. Group sessions were designed to build relationships with the ten artists, create a collaborative atmosphere, and ensure com-
mon ground was explored. Information on requirements and expectations was collectively discussed with the group across two sessions, centring on each artist’s practice and brainstorming unifying threads for the group exhibition. In the short timeframe of three months, it was essential that the process was egalitarian and inclusive. I believe that the curatorial mentorship had a significant impact on the exhibition. !rough individual and group sessions, I was able to build positive working relationships and acquire a depth of knowledge that informed my ability to curate a diverse range of art forms, which included drawing, painting, sculpture, print, photography, film, textiles, audio, and collage. I developed an awareness of each artist’s practice and there was a shared consciousness about the work among the artists themselves. !e predominant feeling was one of anticipation, built through a sense of collegiality and shared purpose. !e Bolay Programme is intended to provide supports for artists who feel disconnected from their practice, and for some of the group this is exactly what the scheme provided. For many of the participating artists, it was their first time to work with a curator. !erefore, during the initial networking session, it was productive for me to discuss the role of the curator and detail the artist-curator relationship. !e experience of working with ten artists was excellent and everyone worked productively towards the exhibition, ‘Mapping Stories: Scéalmhapáil’, which was presented at the Linenhall from 28 February to 5 April. !e narratives within the exhibition were both personal and collective, documenting self and other, while resonating within County Mayo and beyond. !e stories that were collectively mapped by the artists in the exhibition included: folklore, storytelling, and oral histories; language, voice and song; grief, memory, absence, and transformation; trauma, migration, and war; the Irish landscape, ritual and ceremony. !e participating artists valued having a professional sounding board for their current practice and future plans. !e main outcomes of the mentorship that I have noted, and that have been shared in feedback, centre on increased confidence, emotional support, and the benefits of dialogue for augmenting understandings of practice and direction. Some artists expressed an interest in further opportunities and ongoing mentorship. !e Bolay Programme 2025 is currently being finalised, and I am confident that the initiative will continue to develop and thrive.
Dr Marianne O’Kane Boal is a curator and writer based in the northwest of Ireland. She is President of AICA Ireland. aica.ie
[Top]: Marianne O’Kane Boal with the ten artists participating in the Bolay Programme 2025; photograph courtesy of the artists and the author. [Middle]: Martina O’Connor, The Things We Did Not Talk About When You Were Here, oil, ink, and acrylic on Fabriano 300gsm paper; photograph by Alison Laredo, courtesy of the artist and The Linenhall Arts Centre. [Bottom]: Installation view, ‘Mapping Stories | Scéalmhapáil’; photograph by Alison Laredo, courtesy of the artist and The Linenhall Arts Centre.
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Visual Artists’ News Sheet | May – June 2025
VAI Event
Screenings at The Curve VENUS PATEL REPORTS ON A SCREENING EVENT BY IRISH ARTISTS’ FILM INDEX AT VAI’S DUBLIN OFFICE. ON 6 MARCH, Irish Artists’ Film Index hosted the third
event in their ‘Screenings at !e Curve’ series in the atrium space of VAI’s Dublin O(ce in Curved Street, Temple Bar. !e screening event consisted of six pairings of art films and a discussion of the presented work. Even beyond these pairings, the films spoke to each other, variously engaging themes of memory, nostalgia, domesticity, female labour, death, and ecology. !e first pairing comprised Wall by Vera Ryklova and In the Robing Room (2012) by Áine Phillips. Both films explored the history of pain inflicted on women and the trauma it leaves through the filmmaker’s physical performances. !e second set paired Paul Timoney’s Welcome Back From The Grave (2023) and Louise Manifold’s In Death & Fiction (2013). !ese films examine how people make sense of death through stories, with the former using animation and humour, and the latter, footage of an abandoned house and a short story. !e third pairing was BUM SHOWER: Adventures from the Gig Economy (2020) by Beth Fox and Buttered Up (2017) by Áine Phillips that investigated the realities of domestic labour through the creation of absurd characters, scenarios, and underworlds. Next up was Home Sea Home (2023) by Maria McSweeney and Shivan Alouf, and Goodbye to Marion Avenue (2022) by Deirdre Mulrooney that each spoke
to nostalgia and the search for peace in both natural and urban landscapes. !e fifth pairing saw Mieke Vanmechelen’s Suspension (2020) and Grace Weir’s Dust Defying Gravity (2004) using space and cinematic techniques to explore futility. !e final pairing, Csilla Toldy’s Ec(h)o (2023) and David Ian Bickley’s Threads (2019), created beautiful and powerful narratives around our relationship to the environment. After the screenings, film artist and founder of Irish Artists’ Film Index, Fifi Smith, facilitated a discussion with the attendees, composed of people new to the practice, established practitioners, and lovers of film. Each pair of films was connected by three ‘clues’ (for example, lubrication or confrontation with space) which were used to inspire discussion. While diving deeper into the works, we spoke about the different generations of Ireland, analogue versus digital media, and the broader political, social, and cultural contexts surrounding the works. Some of the filmmakers, such as Vera Ryklova, Deirdre Mulrooney, and Beth Fox, were in attendance as well, and offered interesting insights into their work. !e event provided a meeting place for artists that I sometimes see in passing but have never had the chance to properly speak to and gave space for meaningful and engaging discussion in a relaxed setting. !e Irish Artists’ Film Index (formerly the MExIn-
Irish Artists Film Index, screening at The Curve, VAI Headquarters, 2 Curved Street, Temple Bar, 6 March 2025; photograph by Mary McGrath, courtesy of VAI.
dex) is an incredibly necessary resource for artists, curators, and researchers, providing a searchable online database of film works by Irish and Ireland-based artists (irishartistsfilmindex.ie). With increased access to the required technology, the number of artists working with the medium of experimental moving image is growing rapidly; however, with many artworks not being regularly exhibited, they can be forgotten about. It is incredible to have the index and events like these to showcase and bring about dialogue around these works, with many speaking to the current climate of Ireland, how it’s changed, and the pain that remains within the public psyche and lived experiences. !e screening event gave me the chance to see incredible work by other film artists I was not aware of, with pieces stretching from the early 2000s to now. Seeing the brilliance of Irish artists’ experimental film broadened my view of what is possible in the medium, and how it can be further expanded and reimagined.
Venus Patel is an experimental filmmaker and performance artist based in Dublin. venuspatel.com
Irish Artists Film Index, post event discussion in the atrium space, VAI Headquarters, 2 Curved Street, Temple Bar, 6 March 2025; photograph by Mary McGrath, courtesy of VAI.
Lifelong Learning Summer 2025 In Person Events
Webinars & Online Clinics
BELFAST IN PERSON NI HELP DESKS WITH BRIAN KIELT Date: Wednesday 7 May Time: 2pm – 4:30pm Location: Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich Places: 5 Cost: Free
SECURING AND DELIVERING PER CENT FOR ART PROJECTS WITH CLODAGH EMOE Date: Tuesday 6 May Time: 11am – 12:30pm Places: Unlimited Cost: €5 (VAI Members); €10 (General Admission)
DUBLIN VISUAL ARTISTS CAFÉ: DIGITAL CURRENTS WITH COLIN MCKEOWN Date: Thursday 8 May Location: RUA RED, Tallaght Time: 2pm – 4pm Places: 30 Cost: €5 (South Dublin based Artists); €10 (VAI Members); €15 (General Admission)
CONNECTED HORIZONS: EXPANDING FOCUS OPPORTUNITIES FOR ARTISTS ENGAGING WITH PHOTOGRAPHY Date: Tuesday 6 May Time: 2pm – 3:30pm Places: Unlimited Cost: €5 (VAI Members); €10 (General admission) CURATORIAL ENGAGEMENT WITH AISLING CLARK Date: Wednesday 4 June Time: 11am – 12:30pm Places: Unlimited Cost: FREE (Kerry-based Artists); €5 (VAI Members); €10 (General Admission) THE ART OF COLLABORATIVE PRACTICE WITH ELLEN MARA DE WACHTER Date: Thursday 12 June Time: 11am – 12:30 Places: Unlimited Cost: Free (Clare, Limerick and Tipperary based Artists); €5 (VAI Members); €10 (General Admission) CLINICS: THE ART OF COLLABORATIVE PRACTICE WITH ELLEN MARA DE WACHTER Date: Thursday 12 June Time: 1:30pm – 4pm Places: 5 Cost: €5 (Clare, Limerick and Tipperary-based Artists only)
VAI Helpdesks
VAI NI Helpdesks
HELPDESK WITH OONA HYLAND Date: Thursday 1 May Time: 2pm – 4:30pm Places: 5 Cost: Free
NI HELPDESK WITH BRIAN KIELT Date: Wednesday 14 May Time: 2pm – 4:30pm Places: 5 Cost: Free
HELPDESK WITH OONA HYLAND Date: Thursday 8 May Time: 2pm – 4:30pm Places: 5 Cost: Free
NI HELPDESK WITH BRIAN KIELT Date: Wednesday 21 May Time: 2pm – 4:30pm Places: 5 Cost: Free
HELPDESK WITH OONA HYLAND Date: Thursday 15 May Time: 2pm – 4:30pm Places: 5 Cost: Free
NI HELPDESK WITH BRIAN KIELT Date: Tuesday 27 May Time: 2pm – 4:30pm Places: 5 Cost: Free
HELPDESK WITH OONA HYLAND Date: Thursday 22 May Time: 2pm – 4:30pm Places: 5 Cost: Free
NI HELPDESK WITH BRIAN KIELT Date: Wednesday 4 June Time: 2pm – 4:30pm Places: 5 Cost: Free
HELPDESK WITH OONA HYLAND Date: Thursday 12 June Time: 2pm – 4:30pm Places: 5 Cost: Free
NI HELPDESK WITH BRIAN KIELT Date: Wednesday 11 June Time: 2pm – 4:30pm Places: 5 Cost: Free
HELPDESK WITH OONA HYLAND Date: Thursday 19 June Time: 2pm – 4:30pm Places: 5 Cost: Free
NI HELPDESK WITH BRIAN KIELT Date: Wednesday 18 June Time: 2pm – 4:30pm Places: 5 Cost: Free
HELPDESK WITH OONA HYLAND Date: Thursday 26 June Time: 2pm – 4:30pm Places: 5 Cost: Free
NI HELPDESK WITH BRIAN KIELT Date: Tuesday 24 June 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 NI Information and Bookings Fees VAI members receive preferential discount of 50% on fees for all VAI training and professional development events.
To contact the NI Helpdesk or to inquire about upcoming Professional Development events in Northern Ireland, visit: visualartists.ie/ni-portal/ help-desk-advice
Other Ground Pascal Ungerer
South East Technological University School of Art and Design, Wexford
Vision BA Hons Art Degree Show Wexford Arts Centre Opens 15 May 18:00 Runs to 4 June 2025
May 1 - June 5 2025 The LAB Gallery Curated by Margarita Cappock
www.thelab.ie
2nd May - 21st June
an archive Saturday 10th May
SYMPOSIUM Free | Booking Required: SOUTHTIPPARTSCENTRE.IE
WOMEN
ARTISTS
ACTION
GROUP
national c aft & design cr
Years
AWARDS AW WARDS
Celebrating & Supporting Irish Craft & Design
T I M E L I N E S
Basking
TIMELINES
Tom Meskell
GROWTH AND CATASTROPHE
AN EXHIBITION OF TAPESTRIES
30/05 11/07/2025
Opening 29/05 at 6pm
WEXFORD COUNTY COUNCIL Carricklawn, Wexford, Y35 WY93
Opening hours: Monday - Friday 9.00am - 5.00pm
Basking is a celebration of both the resilience of nature and the power of community.
If you’re interested in being part of this exhibition, please get in touch artscentre@roscommoncoco.ie
The exhibition will feature a life-sized lantern sculpture of a basking shark, surrounded by over 60 shell-like lantern structures, all crafted from willow and tissue paper and lit from within. Featuring a soundscape by renowned artists Colm Ó Snodaigh and Brian Hogan.
Community and Artist engagement from 27th May - 12th June
Roscommon Arts Centre invites local communities and artists to be part of the exhibition and work with the artist Tom Meskell through a series of workshops.
Exhibition Opens Friday 13th June 6pm with live performance from Colm Ó Snodaigh and Brian Hogan. Exhibition Runs Friday 13th June 25th July
T: 090 662 5824 / 090 663 7320 W: roscommonartscentre.ie
© Alex Prager. Film Still from Run (2022). Courtesy Alex Prager Studio and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul, and London.
PhotoIreland’s new cultural space launches in Dublin this July Find out more at image.museum
ICI__VAI_Full Back Pg.indd 1
27/04/2025 22:35