Residency and Commission- Sculpture in Kells

Sculpture in Kells Commissioned to do residency and create new work along with Aileen Lambert for Sculpture in Kells, in response to the Priory, Kells, a fringe event of the  Kilkenny Arts Festival, ‘08. Worked with the primary school children, invited them to listen to the wall for sounds of the past and I photographed this task. The image was printed up 8 ft by 4 ft and left up against the Priory wall during the Kilkenny Arts Festival.

The chain link motif was carried through to gathering childrens used clothes and asking the community who visit the priory to make a prayer chain, knotting them together. This sculpture piece was then placed in the Priory but unfortunately not at the site originally chosen by the artist. 

 

Installation from movement and poloroid camera stills

Bog Lining i,

An embodied response to our bogs as sites of contention, this piece was shown live in the Courthouse Gallery for Anois/Aris gallery exhibition of artists who had studios there over the years. 16 minutes long, this live multi-media performance involved bags of turf, a polaroid camera that was used during the performance and a red dress that was worn and stitched during this once off performance which was witnessed by the gallery audience.

The polaroid image taken during the performance and the position of the turf were left as an installation for the duration of the exhibition.

Urban Artistic Interventions - project management

Finding Portlaoise - Urban Artistic  Interventions was a very interesting project that I managed for the Arts Office in Laois in October, 2007. Working with Arts Officer Muireann Ni Domhaill we curated 11 performance artists to artistically intervene in the day to day lives of the people of Portlaoise. The Space Shuttle was brought from Ground Up in Clare to a public meeting park in the centre of Portlaoise and used a performance space, art gallery and art classroom.

On of the exciting participatory projects was run by Jake an international hair stylist. She kindly volunteered to work with the travelling community offering them the opportunity to train with her.

After the event there was a day seminar discussing what we as artists found in Portlaoise and questioning the notion of interventionist performance art and its role in our culture.

Rural identity- Ground Up Artists Collective

Inspired by and managed by artist/curator Fiona Woods, the then visual artists officer for Clare at the helm, 2003-2006, Ground Up was a unique opportunity for  Clare based artists to highlight and acknowledge their rural arts practice allowing site specific work to be sited in the rural and gave a forum for rural aesthetics to be explored and celebrated.

I learned so much about collaborations, their strengths and their weaknesses while working with a group of artists over a 2 year period. An formal network Ground Up Artists Collective is one of the outcomes, of which I was treasurer for a few years and am now a passive member. 
GUAC creates contemporary art in rural contexts. The group supports, promotes and advocates for rural based art projects and events which engage with local communities of place or communities of interest. See www.groundupartists.com for more details.

“Sweet Bellharbour” was my response to Ground Up; a multimedia temporary installation involving
a sound recording of my neighbours naming their deceased family members and 49 stitched white
sheets with the names of the 49 people I had known in a village of 52 homes who had passed away in 
my lifetime to date. This took place over 10 days in a triangular field farmed by my father, in the ruins of
 Corcomroe Abbey, Bellharbour, Co.Clare and was commissioned by Clare County Council as part of
the Ground Up 2 art in rural context process, ‘05.