Maria (Vanessa) Kerin, an artist curator.


Welcome to my blog. It introduces some of the processes and projects that I have been involved in recent years as an independent, rural based artist-curator and choreographer, working towards sustaining a slower rural based lifestyle, through creativity that also supports autonomy and self organisation within an inter-connective model of collaboration.

My movement-based arts practice provokes and informs a translocal artist-curatorial and choreographic practice, manifesting into peer to peer networks and systems to support collaborations presently in Ireland, Estonia and Sweden, in an interdisciplinary practice without borders.

I am particularly interested in deep listening, sensing time and opening up memories through awareness/presence as an embodied creativity process and ethical inquiry, informed through somatic principles that supports my practice concerned with our relationships with nature and consciousness. For example see blog page 'Post domestic: The future is the forest". Work with Kristina Kvamme, Sweden, since August 2019, in her walking practice that links through image and text live online on Fridays nourishes this. Ongoing explorations with Rachel Sweeney through Articulating Thresholds expands this inquiry.

Since 2018 I've been working on translocal, transdisciplinary collaborations in experimental heritage, with Professor Bodil Petersson of Linneaus University and members of Experimental Heritage network Sweden. This has led to us forming Karum-Creevagh, a group of artists, archaeologists and ecologists from Ireland and Sweden, concerned with our future.
See www.experimentalheritage.com for a detailed archive.

See Outrider Artists.wix.com for more info on local rural networks and cross-cultural sharing.
For other online images, see my kind partner Michael Walsh's documentation of my work:

https://issuu.com/michaelwalsh/docs/10_days_embodied_creative_process_d


https://issuu.com/michaelwalsh/docs/future_domestic_2013_visual_diary


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSYpxRfzKp0&t=4s


Should you wish to contact me for more information please text 00353877711033 or email: kerinmaria@gmail.com

Tuesday, March 9, 2021

Skying - a course in embodied colour and painting

January -February 2021 SKYING

Constable termed 'skying' as a verb; lying on the ground looking up at the sky. While we didn't actually lie on the ground, we did connect through movement practice to being grounded as the portal to this experimental creative process.   

I developed an 8 weeks live participatory online course working with 6 participants exploring colour through an embodied creativity process; a sensorial inquiry, exploring our embodied relations to the sky as our subject matter through water-colour painting- Sounds, textures, smells, colours and our imaginations.

Redefines our relations with the space around us, focusing on cloud-watching, a great distraction from the shifting ground of the pandemic.
 

Tidal Welly Walking 1st October 2020 onwards


On the1st October 2020 on Lahinch beach I invited a group of local friends/artists to partake in an embodied pilot 'walk,' a somatic movement based exploration experiencing the conditions of the space between high and low tide on the beach.  Exploring the possibilities of sensorial walking through somatic insights from Body-mind Centering, Origins (Joan Davies) Traditional Chinese Medicine integration, contemporary dance techniques and Antoinette Spillane Still Point method. 

This process of inquiring is an experimental, open-ended, art and movement-based creative research practice being explored between Rachel Sweeney and Maria Kerin and co-aligners under the umbrella title ARTICULATING THRESHOLDS through a transdisciplinary, translocal, post site-specific lens.




















This practice developed over the Autumn/Winter when possible with different participants. 

Thanks to all who participated. We will return to the beach after the lockdown.


Wednesday, June 17, 2020

Articulating Thresholds- collaboration with Rachel Sweeney

As part of our collaborative process through Karum-Creevagh research framework, Rachel and I are exploring a movement-based research approach to cultural heritage research through 'adaptation' and weaving back and forth through timelines, in a tanslocal, post-site specific inquiry,  supported by somatic principles: 

Articulating Thresholds - an afternoon of tea, talking and moving around questions of how we dance with change.

We had a two-week residency at the Burren College of Art (February 2020), which included 2 open studio invites to artists, dancers, environmentalists, archaeologists, and community elders to join us in a participatory multi-disciplinary inquiry, including storytelling, drawing, materials sharing (bone), movement and dance.

"Consciously striving to dance at the thresholds and slippages of artistic and environmental disciplines, we ask how adaptation might act as a strategy to inform our conscious encounter with radical change. Looking back as we move forward, our work maps timelines of Irish cultural heritage practices, particularly around water rituals in sacred sites that inform both metaphoric and real-time understandings of body-place relations".

We have facilitated 3 local sharings this year and continue our research process together through weekly movement practice sharings online.

Wednesday, April 1, 2020

Burren College Residency, 9 Dec- 22 Dec 2019

The road that leads nowhere.

In December 2019, I spent 2 weeks daily driving an inspirational route, passing Poulnabrone dolmen and others, passing the road that leads nowhere, as I made my way over Ailwee mountain, to the beautiful Burren College of Art in Ballyvaughan, Co. Clare. The journey of about 40 minutes from my home outside Ennistymon set the atmosphere for my studio work, pulling me back in time, playing with the multitemporal.


Monday, September 2, 2019

PhD on hold

Year 2 of my PhD research into decision making through somatic principles for transdisciplinary collaborations is on hold once again.


in search of the eel...

February 2019 when starting my explorations with Danny Burke for Karum Creevagh Experimental Heritage process connecting with Kilshanny,  I had a dream that was to be a point of departure : inside a box were eels coming out of the belly of a body.

For the past 9 months Danny and I have regularly met and discussed art and archaeology of the area, starting with Kilmakreehy on the estuary and going upriver to Kilshanny.

See Creevagh- Kilshanny Research blog for photos.

https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1189041774148222894#editor/target=post;postID=7531734188535431696;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=0;src=postname


Thursday, April 19, 2018

interdisciplinary movement based arts practice, Ankor

Ankor, a European interdisciplinary movement based arts practice constellation established in Sept 2017 in Cavan, Ireland


A European interdisciplinary 
movement-based arts practice constellation focused around peer sharing that aims to research and create platforms to support our art practice and processes (visual art and/or contemporary dance) 

This grew from the initial concept by Maria Kerin, an interdisciplinary artist-curator, in response to her own needs to link with a creative like-minded community of movement based artists and her desire to support and share movement based research and knowledge horizontally. 

During 2017, from meetings with artists Alexandra Rafferty, IRE, Helle Kvamme, SW, Mairead Vaughen, IRE, Russell Brown US, and Dr. Eleftheria Rapti, Greece, the urgency to establish a community was apparent. 

In September 2017, Maria Kerin invited Russell Brown, Daire Skuze (radio producer/folklorist) and Alexandra Rafferty to a sharing of practices over 3 days in her studio and home in Ennistymon. Co.Clare.

In response to an invite by Cavan Arts Officer Catriona O’Reilly offering a residency in her home in Cavan and create something for Culture Night 2017, Maria Kerin curated Cavan hothouse research residency, inviting a gathering of movement based artists in a peer to peer sharing week.

4 O’Clock TEAS as part of Culture Night….Belturbert, Cavan.

Participants: Helle Kvamme, artist-curator from Yellow Box, Oland, Sweden, Russell Browne, USA, dance artist and scholar, Dr. Miread Vaughen, IRE, contemporary dancer/choreographer and international visual artist Patricia McKenna from Cavan. On route we had an introductory meeting and brief movement based sharing with limerick-based Irish artist Isolde Donohoe. 

Maria Kerin and Russell Brown are researching the potential to form Ankor into a legal identity through the structure of an integrated authentic organisational model, that could host many artists participating at any level and any way they want, based on their own needs but with sharing at the heart of the connection. 

Helle Kvamme invited Patricia Mckenna to make work for “The Forest” an ongoing research exhibition/process in Kalmar and she exhibited Mairead Vaughen’s film at the opening with Maria Kerin giving a participatiory performance/preseantation at the opening. 

Both Maria and Patricia did movement based research in the forest over the week in Sweden and the ongoing conversations on methodology and process continue between Maria with Helle.