Read about the collaborators of this project!
AIDEEN BARRY (ARHA)
Aideen is a member of Aosdána, a visual artist whose work has been wodely exhibited in solo and group exhibitions and commissions in Ireland and internationally. Significant projects include: residencies and exhibitions at IMMA, The Irish Museum of Modern Art, The Headlands Centre for the Arts, San Francisco, Matucana 100 in Chile, Louise T. Blouin Gallery, UK, Galeria IH ESP, Artscene Shanghai, Project 304 Gallery, at Bangkok Thailand, BAC Geneva, Art OMI, The American Film Maker's Co-op and Yaddo in New York. NASA Kennedy Space Centre, Skattfell in Iceland, and the Banff Centre, Canada. In 2019 she showed in a two person show with Alice Maher curated by Dr. Tina Kinsella, Fair is Foul & Foul is Fair, at the Katzen Centre at the American University Museum in Washington DC.
Barry was commissioned for Kaunas 2022 the European Capital of Culture in Lithuania for the film Klostės and the Bunting Commission for her piece Oblivion for the Irish Traditional Music Archive and Music Network. She has upcoming projects at the Centre for the Less Good Idea in Johannesburg.
Her solo show this year has toured around Ireland at LCGA and Source Arts Centre and will be continuing on to Paris later on this year at the Culturel Irlandais, the Canada council in Paris, and other projects the the East Wing Doha in Qatar, ArteBA in Buenos Aires in Argentina and Artissima Art Fair.
In 2019 she was awarded the Myron Marty Fellowship at Drake University Iowa and taught at NYU New York, Edinburgh University, VCU Virginia and George Washington University.
Barry's work is in several important Art Collections including Art Omi New York, The Francis Greenberger Collection, Trinity College, Dublin, The Glucksman Gallery, University College Cork, Department of Education & Skills, Office of Public Works, Centre de l'Arte Contemporary and the University of Malaga, ESP, The Butler Gallery Collection, NUIG Collection, and the Arts Council of Ireland.
MARGARET O'CONNOR
Margaret O’Connor trained with distinguished milliners like Philip Treacy, Noel Stewart, Yvette Jeffs, Kirsten Scott and Sarah Cant. She has won several awards including the Global Original Fashion Design Award at Guangzhou International Fashion Week (2017) and Milliner of the Year at the Irish Fashion Innovation Awards (2014).
Margaret has come from an Art and textiles background. Margaret was trained by some of the 'leading lights of the Millinery industry'. While filled with the landscape of her hometown of Boston, Tubber in County Clare, O'Connor interprets Irish tradition and historicism through her own personal awakening.
Her creations have attracted the attention and been worn by a broad range of celebrities. From Lady Gaga to Years and Years 9UK Pop Band.
RIIT ᕇᑦ
A Canadian Inuk musician, singer and television presenter from Pangnirtung, Nunavut who is most noted as the host of APTN's children's series Anaana's Tent.
As Riit (ᕇᑦ), she released her self titled debut EP, a collaboration with The Jerry Cans and producer Michael Phillip Wojewada, in 2017 on Aakuluk Music. In 2019 she released the single 'Qaumajuapik'. Her album Ataaga, produced by Graham Walsh, was released in October 2019 on Six Shooter Records and has received international acclaim and praise, including a nomination for the Juno Awards.
She won the Emerging Talent Award from the Canadian Youth Media Alliance in 2019.
STEPHEN SHANNON
Stephen Shannon is a composer and music producer based in Dublin, Ireland. He has previously recorded and released original music as a member of Halfset, and currently as Strands and the duo Mount Alaska (251 Records). He works out of his own studio - Experimental Audio - where he has produced, recorded and mixed dozens of records for Irish and International artists.
Stephen writes and composes for film, documentaries and TV. Recent film work includes Kim Bartley’s feature documentary Pure Grit, which premiered (and won best Feature Documentary Award) at the 2021 Galway Film Fleadh; and adaptation of Daniel Woodrell’s Tomato Red, directed by Juanita Williams and Brian O’Malley’s gothic horror, The Lodgers. He has also composed scores for Andrea Mastroveto’s I Am Not Legend and original live scores for Night of the Living Dead, Der Golem, Metropolis, and The Adventures of Prince Achmed, which have been performed at BAM in New York, Dublin’s National Concert Hall and Christchurch Cathederal.
AISLING LYONS
Aisling Lyons is a multi-award winning harp and concertina player from County Clare. She grew up in a family steeped in Irish traditional music and song.
In recent years, Aisling has been described as 'one of the rising stars and budding composers of the Irish harp world - rooted in tradition and beautifully inventive'.
Aisling is sought after as a teacher and performer both in Ireland and abroad. She has travelled to America, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Norway & the UK. Aisling holds 8 All Ireland Championship titles & a Grade 8 Distinction in Irish Harp from The London College of Music. Aisling completed her BA in Irish Music in 2018 and graduated with First Class Honours.
In 2021, Aisling graduated from the University of Limerick with First Class Honours as a Professional Master of Music Education where she also teaches harp on undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.
CATHAL MURPHY
Cathal Murphy is an Irish musician and composer. He studied percussion performance as a Fulbright scholar in New York under Morris Lang at Brooklyn College from which he holds a masters degree. As a performer he has worked with orchestras and bands in Ireland, Europe and the US, including the National Symphony Orchestra. He has worked with a number of artists and musicians as composer, arranger and musical director across multiple genres and media and is a long-time collaborator of Aideen Barry. He currently works in visual arts project management, installation and logistics and is working on several collaborative musical projects. He lives in Tipperary.
RUTH SMITH
Ruth Smith is a performer, musician and broadcaster and host of Simply Folk on RTE Radio 1, awarded Gold for Specialist Music Programme at the IMRO Radio Awards 2021. Throughout her Career, Ruth has worked on many different showsboth on radio & TV. Most recently co-presenting 'Christmas at Home' on RTÉ One, 'Shine Your Light Solstice ' on Radio 1, 'Fleadh TV' on TG4, the award winning radio documentary 'By the Lakes of Ponchartirain' and co-hosting the RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards for the 4th year running.
As a musician and performer Ruth was a cast member of 'Once the Musical' in the Olympia Theatre and THISISPOPBABY's RIOT. She has performed alongside Horslips and Paul Muldoon both nationally and internationally, as part of Muldoon's translation of Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire. More recently Ruth contributed to Dial aSeanchaí: a unique audio experience celebrating Irish folklore, curated by 6 contemporary artist and produced by John Lillis.
Ruth's academic studies span the traditional, classical and theatrical world's with a BA in Music, Drama & Theatre Studies and HDip from Trinity College Dublin and a Masters in Trad Performance from The Irish World Academy of Music & Dance, University of Limerick.
SARAH SEARSON
Sarah has worked with statutory agencies, local government organisations and educational institutes developing policy and long-term development initiatives. Her skills include strategic and operational leadership, staff and resource management, financial planning and venue management, artistic programme development and advocacy. Sarah was the Director of The Dock, one of Ireland's finest art centres, in 2017 the organisation secured major capital funding for refurbishment.
As inaugural Head of the Centre for Creative Arts and Media at GMIT she led the centre through programmatic review and developed externally focused intuitional partnerships, including, Tulca, Galway City Curator in Residence, RTE, Galway City Museum, Galway bid for UNESCO City of Film and an International Summer Residencies programme.
She has researched & implemented policy strategies for local authorities such as Dublin City, Galway City, Wicklow, South Dublin County Councils. Her clients include The Arts Council, CREATE, Common Ground, Waterford Healing Arts Trust, Lismore Castle Arts, NUI Maynooth. Longer-term urban & strategic plans include The Grangegorman Development Agency Arts Strategy & The Liberties Area Development Plan and mediation strategies for "In Context 3" with South Dublin County Council.
She has been the driver behind several significant arts and cultural initiatives; developing Public Art.ie, a communication tool to support public art and was advisor to the development of Arts and Health.ie. She served as Arts Officer Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council for five years where she delivered two major capital projects, Dance Theatre of Ireland and The Pavilion Theatre and projects such as Dublin Youth Dance Festival, Dun Laoghaire Farmers Markets, Festival of World Cultures, Poetry Now Festival & The Strong Awards.
She lectured at DIT & UCD and is a graduate of Cultural Policy and Arts Management (UCD) & Public Culture Studies (IADT) She is an Art graduate of the DIT.
SINEAD GLEESON
Sinéad Gleeson is an Irish Book Award-winning writer, editor and freelance broadcaster. Having edited the work of others, in 2016's The Long Gaze Back and 2017's The Glass Shore, she released her first book Constellations, a collection of personal essays, in 2019. Some of the essays in this work document Gleeson's struggle through illness, she is a survivor of Acute promyelocytic leukemia and has had a hip replacement.
Gleeson has been a book and music reviewer for The Irish Times' The Ticket arts supplement and presents The Book Show on RTÉ Radio. She has been a judge for the Choice Music Prize. She is a writer in residence at University College Dublin.
FIONA SHEIL
Fiona Sheil is a Sound designer and Composer,
Collaborations with Catherine Young include State of exception, Ultima Thule , The
Choreography Project, The river will still run to the sea for Mind your step, Welcoming the stranger as part of The casement Project 2016. She is currently collaborating on an upcoming work Floating on a Dead sea with Catherine Young Dance. Other design includes No one see the video dir by Samantha cade, Holy Mary by Eoin Coilfer, Madhouse by Una McKevitt & PJ Gallagher DFF/Abbey theatre, Anatomy of a suicide Director Tom Creed, CITY by John McCarthy at the Everyman Theatre.She was chosen for The Centre Stage project 2020/21, run by Theatre Forum, with La Escuela Pública de Formación Cultural (Spain), & Kultur i Väst (Sweden). Upcoming projects include Glue as part of Dublin Theatre festival 2021 & Rough Magics All the Angels. She graduated with a Masters in Experimental Sound from UCC in 2020.
Fiona was nominated for The Hearsay audio prize 2021.
CHARLES PERPOIL
Charles Perpoil, born in the Loire Valley, France in 1979, discovered wood carving at the age of six. At the age of fourteen he joined the French ancient guild “Compagnons Du Devoir”, to master his skills as a “Menuisier” wood carver by travelling around France, Ireland and Belgium for ten years.
After his training, he moved to the west of Ireland in 2005 to set up his own business , Art Francais, in Leitrim. A series of fortunate and unfortunate events in his life, brought him back to sculpting again, and to explore other ranges of media such as ceramic and stone carving. Wood is my love, polished or natural, waxed or painted, it will always have a warmth that I don’t find in other materials. It’s in its natural shape that it offers the most expressive look and aspect. Looking at the wonder of nature around us in clouds, trees, stone, we all see something that reminds us of familiar forms, whether it be a face, an animal or whatever arises in our imagination. For me gorse/aitinn is magical in this sense. I can see a new life in each branch. It offers endless possibilities. Ceramic and stone came only recently into my work. It has opened my eyes and mind to the extensive possibilities that these materials offer and how I can incorporate them into my wood sculptures.
LOUISE WALLACE
Louise Wallace is a visual artist based in the west coast of Ireland and currently in fourth year of photography film video in Limerick School of Art and Design
BA (Hons) Photography Film Video Limerick College of Art & Design 2014 -
STEPHEN HALL
Stephen Hall is an Irish Writer, Director and Cinematographer. Working predominately in Film, Commercial and advertising projects, recent work includes Writing and Directing feature film ‘NightShift’, shooting the 2017 Kildare film award short film ‘Taking Stock’ and shooting the feature film ‘Dark Sacred Night’.
His passion for telling stories came from a very young age. Since finishing a B.s.c Hons in video and film, Stephen has Written and Directed many projects for the festival circuit, most recent of which being the international award winning ‘Sinners’. Coming from a visual effects and cinematography background for television, he has a keen eye for visuals.
In his final year in college, Stephen began teaching film making in another neighboring college while he wrote, directed and shot his thesis film. This film was then optioned for a television pilot for the national broadcaster RTE.
Stephen loves high concept, he likes stories that push the boundaries of genre and has a visual flare for creating stories that draw you in and hold you there.
Stephen is hot off the heals of Directing his first feature film ‘Nightshift’ which is currently with Archstone Distribution for international sales.
MICHELLE RUANE
Michelle Ruane is a Freelance Make-up Artist. “I see myself as an artist. Make-up is essentially a very special form of painting. My work with Macnas, Hermes and many Theatre companies, allows me to explore how people present themselves to the world. Make-up gives us a way to exaggerate, explore and play with the aesthetics of character.”
PADDY CRITCHLEY
Paddy Critchley (b.1998) is a visual artist from Laois, Ireland. Graduating in 2021 from Fine Art Painting in the Limerick School of Art & Design, two key concerns of Paddy’s practice are the transience of time and temporality. He also has a keen interest in theatre, and the theatrical staging of objects. He takes these elements and transfers them into the studio, to tie the links between life being a stage, and the protagonists that the stage contains. Working with mostly painting, while incorporating photography, film, and literature, Paddy uses paint to vocalise his thoughts on these issues. Paddy has exhibited frequently over the past number of years. His work is featured in the Hunt Museum’s permanent collection in Limerick. He has recently held a show behind closed doors (due to covid-19) on the theatre stage in the Dunamaise Arts Centre, Laois titled ‘Waiting’.
Recent work has included references to Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, a huge inspiration for the artist. Recent paintings and sculptures have focused on still life and have references to other botanical studies.
The flower is a metaphor for the passing of time. Leaves sprout from trees and flowers bloom. Rainfall comes and soaks their roots just in time for the sun to shine. They cherish this blooming. They grow so tall and gleam into the night. Just as quick as they grow, the sun begins to fade. The leaves turn from green to orange, and some to red, others to yellow. The rest begin their march to death. Until they sprout again. d draw from its beauty to highlight its importance.
JAMES L. HAYES
James L Hayes is an Irish contemporary visual artist whose current work and research practice reinvests a modernist sculptural language. Recent projects use methods of artistic production as a means by which to interrogate the boundaries between artist, artisan and art object in order to draw out the often-incongruous relationships between finished art objects, and the industrial aspects of the processes that produce these revered objects.
This research-based practice has an art historical agenda, referencing key creative influences such as the celebrated Welsh artist Barry Flanagan.
Broader research interests range from contemporary interpretations of sculptural legacies, to site-specific interventionist works that draw from traces of significant pasts and histories.
Previous works have drawn on diverse subjects such as industrial archaeology, other environmental concerns and social and economic conflicts. Hayes' predominantly sculptural practice also encompasses multi- disciplinary and sensory-based sculptural installations. He exhibits his works nationally and internationally whilst also developing large-scale public art commissions and site-specific projects.
He has been awarded numerous awards and grants to support his practice and he also invests heavily in the University educational sector and work across the UK & US higher education system frequently taking part in visiting lecturing series and international cross-collegiate projects and events. Hayes is a graduate of Limerick School of Art & Design, De Montfort University Leicester and the University of London. He is the principal lecturer in Sculpture at the Crawford College of Art in Cork, Ireland.
CYRIL BRISCOE
Cyril Briscoe lives and works in Galway, Ireland. He is a graduate of GMIT in Art & Design and Applied Physics and also on NCAD from where he holds an MA in Virtual Realities and and MFA in Media.
He is a lecturer at GMIT Centre for Creative Arts & Media and at NCAD where he currently tutors Media ander- and postgraduates in the Faculty of Fine Art. He was Galway County Council bursary recipient in 2012 (with Ruth LeGear). He is also co-resident and promoter of club night ‘110th Street’ (with Cian Ó’Cíobhán).
FINN NICHOL
Based between Limerick and Offaly, my practice is a multi-disciplinary enquiry into storytelling which appraises the lived experience of the Anthropocene. Embracing formal experimentation in my studio practice has yields an aesthetic language rooted in collage, illustration and animation- while concurrent musical explorations bear a sonic syntax of richly textured maximalism.
United, sound and visuals form technicolour visions of gothic psychedelia- cohesive worlds from which I launch investigations into isolation and helplessness in the face of anthropogenic fallout. Art becomes both a constructive artefact of this anxiety and an acclimatizing agent in engaging with such dread inducing ideas.
Titled after a haunting early Beach Boys track, The Lonely Sea is vestigial of a year defined by isolation. Conceptualized when largely immobilized by an arthritic flareup and completed while under five kilometres travel restrictions, a sense of entrapment bleeds onto the screen.
Devoid of interaction or connection, characters live out choreographed loops against an increasingly surreal world. Their fixed expressions betray only emotional catalepsy while the method of production- a mixture of hand drawn, claymation and digital animation-