March 2019:  Aonghus McEvoy

Aonghus is a composer, improviser and guitar player based in Dublin. He explores the intersections between composition and improvisation, oblique restraint and histrionic rock excess. Aonghus' work moves between collaborations with improvisers, indeterminate scores for small ensembles and skewed takes on folk idioms. His use of the guitar ranges from employing traditional techniques to experimental methods. Aonghus has performed with musicians such as Rhodri Davies, Annette Krebs, Ludo Mich, Damo Suzuki, David Maranha, Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh, Tristan Clutterbuck, Adam Pultz Melbye and David Lacey. He is also a member of fabricated folk troupe Woven Skull.

 

February 2019: Kathy Tynan

Kathy Tynan (b.1984) graduated from NCAD in 2008 with a BA in Fine Art Painting and in 2010 with an MA entitled Art in the Contemprary World. Tynan makes figurative paintings which focus on details and particularities of everyday urban environments. She has exhibited widely both in Ireland and abroad. Recent solo and selected two person exhibitions include Atonal Supersound, Kevin Kavangh, Dublin (2017); Traversées du Marais, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (2018) and Hands Laid On, Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin (2016). Recent selected group shows include Trophy Hunters, Dada Post, Berlin (2018); Constellations, Kuvataide Academia, Helsinki (2018); Many Worlds, Centre Cultural Irlandais, Paris (2017) and There Are Little Kingdoms, Mermaid Arts Centre, Co.Wicklow (2016). Recent speaking engagements include Competitive Tension, Green on Red, Dublin (2018); Painting As Material, RHA, Dublin (2017) and There's a Ghost in my House, NCAD (2015). She has recently returned from a three month residency in Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris.

 

January 2019: Repeater 

Repeater are a rotating group of artists, musicians, architects and photographers who work together on collaborative audio and visual projects. Their recent work included an exhibition and improvised music set in Aras Eanna, Inis Oirr. The output of this was aired widely throughout the island on pirate radio. Materials broadcast included noise, techno and spoken word, both in English and in Irish.

During their residency in Sirius they will be researching Cobh's history as a global port and its connection to international conflict along with its prison and rebellion histories. Repeater will play a live set at Cork's Quarter Block Party using sound and visuals made during this stay.

Included in this residency are Mel Keane, Frank Sweeney, Jenn Moore, Cliona na Laoi, Cait Fahey, Eva Richardson McCrea, Coilin O'Connell and Michelle Doyle.

 

November 2018: Anna Clock 

Anna Clock is a sound artist and composer based in London via Dublin, working across live music, theatre, film and installation. In her work she aims to create engaging live experiences that challenge audience/performer roles, encourage curiosity and imagination and inspire audiences to listen to their world in new ways.

Recent projects include: Forgotten Women podcasts (Peer Productions); Songlines (Hightide / Dugout theatre); This is a Blizzard by Flock Ensemble & Ana Brothers (Centre17); Spun by Rabiah Hussain (Arcola Theatre); REACTOR by Brad Birch (Artsed); The Moor by Catherine Lucie dir. Blythe Stewart (Old Red Lion); The Show by Rowland Hill (Slade School of Fine Art); [BLANK] by Alice Birch for NT Connections (Orange Tree Theatre & Lyric Hammersmith); CONSTELLATIONS (Vault Festival 2018); For The Fallen (Ballakerneen Studio Isle of Man); Sonic Fluidities (UC San Diego, March 2018); Devil in the Blue Dress (The Bunker); Maria (Omnibus Theatre); Hilda & Virginia by Maureen Duffy (Jermyn Street); Me & My Whale (Royal Exchange Theatre Manchester, Live Art Bistro Leeds); Continuity (Finborough Theatre); Water Bodies (LADA, Whitstable Biennale). She was resident artist at Harrow Libraries in association with SPINE Festival 2018.

www.annaclock.com

 

October 2018: Tom Lane 

Tom Lane is a Dublin based composer and sound designer. He has previously been commissioned to compose music for the Cork Opera House, the Abbey Theatre, the Gate Theatre, Ballet Ireland, Shakespeare's Globe and Pipeworks Organ Festival. He has been nominated for an Irish Times Theatre Award on 5 occasions, most recently for his 2017 opera Front of House. He is currently working on several new opera and theatre projects for 2019.

 

September 2018: Daisy Desrosiers 

Daisy Desrosiers is an independent curator and cultural researcher from Montréal, Canada. In 2019, she will be curating projects at Clark Center in Montréal as well as Oakvilles Galleries in Oakvilles, Canada. Her current research is based on the cultural and material implications of the use of sugar in contemporary art. This residency is supported by the Glucksman Gallery, Cork, through the Nicholas Fox Weber Curatorial Residency.

 

August - September 2018: Kelsey Sheaffer and Joana Stillwell

Kelsey Sheaffer's work is informed by dance and its translation through notation into architecture and sound while Joana Stillwell 's work is informed by everyday phenomena and its translation through gesture and video. Together they will overlap their usually individual practices in a series of evolving multimedia installations, investigating tidal phenomena, walled cities, Boolean logic and the nature of searching. Through sound, video and gesture, they will consider the poetics and politics of attention, space, and time steeped within historical and present day Cork.

Joana Stillwell grew up around the Pacific Ocean in Hawaii, Japan, Guam, and Washington. She lives and works between Seattle, WA and Washington, DC. She graduated with a BA in Art History and a BFA in Photomedia from the University of Washington in 2012 and earned an MFA in Kinetic Imaging from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2017. Recent exhibitions, performances, and screenings include: a window the color of her sunburn, Anderson Gallery, Richmond, VA (2017), InLight, 1708 Gallery, Richmond, VA (2016), Desire Lines, Sediment Gallery, Richmond, VA (2016), Home Brew, The Alice at Satellite Show Miami, Miami Beach, FL (2015), 160 Hours, SOIL Gallery, Seattle, WA (2015), NOW&AFTER International Video Art Festival, Moscow, Russia (2014), Gallery4Culture’s e4c Electronic Gallery, Seattle, WA (2013). She has received two collaborative commissions through the city of Seattle and was a member of the Seattle based artist collective, SOIL. She was awarded a funded residency at Mildred’s Lane, Beach Lake, PA (2016) and with a Graduate Research Grant from Virginia Commonwealth University (2017). 

Kelsey Sheaffer is an interdisciplinary artist and educator based in Richmond, VA. Her work cycles between sound, dance and drawing to explore notation and archives. She works at a library teaching sound, video and other media through a variety of educational programs. She graduated with a BA in Art from Davidson College in 2013 and earned an MFA in Kinetic Imaging from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2016, and has exhibited in galleries and festivals on the east coast. She was awarded with a Graduate Research Grant and a Graduate Travel Grant  from Virginia Commonwealth University (2016).  

 

August 2018: David Beattie 

David Beattie is an artist who lives and works in Dublin, Ireland. He has received a number of Arts Council bursaries, most recently 2015 and was awarded the Harpo Foundation Award in 2010. His work is in a number of public and private collections and most recently was a recipient of the Hennessy Art Fund for IMMA collection, 2016.

Recent solo exhibitions include CCA Derry-Londonderry (2017), Temple Bar Gallery and Studios (2011); The Mattress Factory Art Museum, Pittsburgh and Mercer Union Centre for Contemporary Visual Art, Toronto, Canada (both 2010). Beattie has been included in numerous group exhibitions including TULCA Art Festival , Galway (2017), As Above, so below, Irish Museum of Modern Art (2017), In the Line of Beauty, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2013), O Brave New World, Rubicon Projects, Brussels (2013) All Humans Do, The Model Sligo and Whitebox, New York (2012); Feedback, Galway Arts Centre (2011); Holding Together at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2010); La Part des Choses, Mains d’Oeuvres, Paris, and in Quiet Revolution, Hayward Touring, UK (2009).

Playfully welcoming new connections between foreign ‘things’, Beattie encourages a sense of curiosity and exploration in the act of displacing quotidian objects. Assembled from a variety of everyday materials the work attempts to provide a framework for assessing our daily surroundings. The interactions between object, space and viewer create a dialogue or wider system in which all elements have a role to play. This process of engagement can be seen as a search for a tangible present through the intermediary moments where physics, philosophy, technology and nature collide.

 

July 2018: Sooim Jeong 

London based Korean artist Sooim Jeong completed her MA in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Arts in 2010 and a BA in Fine Art at Kookmin University, Seoul in 2007. She has exhibited widely including Phoenix Gallery, in Exeter (2017), SÍM Gallery in Reykjavík (2017), Highlanes Gallery in Drogheda (2016), Block 336 in London (2016), Interview Room 11 in Edinburgh (2014) and The Lightbox Museum in Woking (2014). Her work has been included in public and private collections worldwide. She has been shortlisted for the Exeter Contemporary Open in 2017 and also shortlisted for The Marmite Prize for Painting in 2016.

Specialising in oil painting, Sooim Jeong gathers scattered past memories and re-composes them into images on the canvas. She re-locates various unrelated past memories into a current ‘non-special’ place in order to create a new scene. In her paintings all the big and small happenings as well as the brutal and mundane, sit side by side and are recognised with equal perspective without distinction. They are blended into an ordinary scene and provide her with a feeling of relief as well as trepidation.

 

June 2018: Adrian Crowley

Adrian Crowley is a songwriter, singer, composer and performer, originally from Galway and now based in Dublin. October 2017, saw the worldwide release of his eighth album,

Dark Eyed Messenger, produced by and featuring Thomas Bartlett aka Doveman.

The album was recorded in New York in Bartlett’s studio in under a week.

Dark Eyed Messenger follows 2014’s  Some Blue Morning, both released on the legendary Scottish label Chemikal Underground Records. Previous albums include, I See Three Birds Flying (2012), Season of the Sparks (2009) and Long Distance Swimmer’ (2007) - all of which were nominated for The Choice Music Prize, with Season Of The Sparks winning the the prestigious award for Irish album of the year in 2010.

Already 2018 has seen Crowley touring across Europe playing venues such as La Botanique in Brussels and churches and concert halls form Netherlands to France, Germany to Spain  & Portugal, and being invited to perform at La Philharmonie in Paris, Festival Printemps de Bourges and End Of The Road Festival in England. In the past, Crowley has shared the stage with artists as diverse as Martin Carthy, Low, Sam Amidon, Joan As Police Woman.

Adrian Crowley is also involved in film with his debut role as screenwriter and actor; working with Irish director Niall Mc Cann on the latter’s new feature film, entitled The Science of Ghosts. The Science of Ghosts saw its world premiere in February at The Dublin International Film Festival. The film which centres around Crowley as the principal character will be appearing at film festivals throughout 2018.

Other current projects include collaborations with Ireland’s foremost contemporary ensemble Crash Ensemble (having premiered new work with them at Explore The North Festival Holland and The National Concert Hall, Dublin) and a live score to the silent movie classic ‘The Four Horseman of The Apocalypse’ which was premiered at St Patrick’s Cathedral at  this year’s St Patrick’s Festival.  The panoramic score was written with and performed by  fellow collaborators Barry Adamson (Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds), Matthew Nolan, Seán MacErlaine and Kevin Murphy (Slow Moving Clouds).

Crowley has had short fiction published in the past and is currently working on his debut collection. He was recently artist in residence at Centre Cultural Irlandais in Paris and is looking forward to his residency at Sirius where he plans to work on new music and writing.

 

May 2018: Siobhan Cleary

Born in Dublin, Siobhán Cleary studied music at NUI Maynooth, Queen’s University Belfast and Trinity College Dublin. She has attended composition courses in Italy, France and Poland where her tutors included Franco Donatoni and Louis Andriessen. She has also studied privately with Tom Johnson and Kevin Volans and studied film scoring with Ennio Morricone and Don Brandon Ray.

In 1995 she was a finalist in the Yorkshire and Humberside Arts Young Composers’ Award at the Huddersfield Festival. Other awards include a Pépinières Young European Artists award in 1996 for a three-month residency in Bologna and first prize in the Arklow Music Festival Composers’ Competition in 1997. In 1997 a concert of her music was performed at Cité International des Arts in Paris.

Siobhán has written the music several films and documentaries including the score for two Roger Corman films, ‘Spacejacked!’ and ‘Dangerous Curves’ and Planet Korda’s “The Book Smugglers”. She also worked with the Ciniteca di Bologna writing music scores to restored films, most notably the Dali/Buñuel classic ‘Un Chien Andalou’ .

Her orchestral work, Threads (1992 rev.1994), was selected by Vienna Modern Masters for performance at the Second International Festival of New Music for Orchestra in Olomouc in the Czech Republic, and was later released on CD. Other orchestral works include ‘Alchemy’ (2001) and Cokaygne (2008) both commissioned by RTÉ and performed by the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra. Other commissions include the Irish Chamber Orchestra, Chamber Choir Ireland and the Vanbrugh Quartet among others. She is the founder and artistic director of the New Sound Worlds concert series from 2005 and in 2015 she founded the Evlana Sinfonietta. Recent works include her opera Vampirella which was performed at Smock Alley March 2017 by RIAM briefs. Siobhán was elected to Aosdána, Ireland’s state-sponsored academy of creative artists in 2008

 

May 2018: Ultan O’Brien

Ultan O’Brien is a fiddle player and violist from County Clare active in the worlds of performance, composition, and education.

Ultan began learning the fiddle at a young age from a variety of musicians in county Clare. He has since studied contemporary and classical music for violin in Dublin’s Conservatory of Music and with Tamás Ittzés in the Kodály Institute in Kecskemét, Hungary. He holds a degree in Music Education from Trinity College, Dublin and DIT.

Ultan performs and records traditional and contemporary Irish music as a soloist & with a number of groups/ bands including Skipper’s Alley and Aon Teanga:Un Çhengey. He views collaboration and the creative processes that emerge from collaborative projects as key to his artistic practice.

Ultan has taught fiddle workshops in Ireland and abroad, most recently in Evanston, Wyoming (March 2016), and in the Camden Irish Centre, London (July, 2015).

In 2017, Ultan received a Traditional Arts Bursary Award from the Arts Council of Ireland to spend time focusing on the viola—specifically, its suitability regarding the intricacies and subtleties of traditional music associated with west Clare— and to create new music on the viola that exists in a contemporary context & is grounded in the aesthetic of west Clare fiddle music.

Ultan  O’Brien Soundcloud

 

April 2018: Jessamyn Fiore 

Jessamyn Fiore (American b. 1980) is a New York based curator and writer as well the co-director of the Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark. She is the curator of the Jean-Paul Najar Foundation in Dubai, UAE, opened in March, 2015. She was the Director of Thisisnotashop, a not for profit gallery space in Dublin, from 2007-2010. She received a Masters in contemporary art theory, practice, and philosophy from The National College of Art and Design, Dublin, in 2009.

Exhibitions curated include 112 Greene Street: The Early Years (1970–1974) at David Zwirner in New York (2011), which led to her editing the critically acclaimed, eponymous catalogue, published by David Zwirner and Radius Books (2012); and a second exhibition for David Zwirner New York titled Gordon Matta-Clark: Above and Below (2013). Recently, she curated II Machines: Clive Murphy & Trevor Tweeton at the Knockdown Center in Mespeth, Queens (May 2015) and was a partner at Rawson Projects gallery on the Lower East Side (Sep 2014 - May 2015), organizing exhibitions by Nathaniel Mary Quinn and Lilja Birgisdottir among others.

Jessamyn Fiore website 

 

March/April 2018: Ann Cleare

Composer Ann Cleare hails from county Offaly, and works in the aresa of concert music, opera, extended sonic environments, and hybrid instrumental design. Her work has been commissioned and presented by major broadcasters sunch as the BBC, NPR, ORF, RTÉ, SWR,WDR for festivals such as Gaudeamus, Wittenertage fur Neue Kammermusik, International Music Institute Darmstadt, Bludenzer Tage Zeitgemäßer Musik, IMATRONIC at ZKM, and MATA, working with ensembles such as: ICE, ELISION,JACK Quartet, Ensemble Nikel, Yarn/Wire, Crash Ensemble, Ensemble Mosaik, The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Through working with some of the most progressive musicians of our time, she has established a reputation for creating innovative forms of music, both in its presentation, and within the music itself. Ann studied at University College Cork, IRCAM, and holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University. Her scores are published by Prject Schott New York. She is Associate Lecturer in Composition at the University of York in England. As an artistic collaborator with Dublin Sound Lab, She will work on developing their programming and production of electronic music over the coming years. Ann is Projects Officer with Sounding the Feminists, a collective championing principles of equality, fairness, inclusivity, and diversity in Irish musical life. More info can be found on her website.

 

March 2018: Francis Heery

Francis Heery (b. 1980) is a composer, researcher and sound artist, originally from Co. Galway. His music explores the idea of ‘the abstract’ and questions the ties between music and linguistic forms by focusing on sonic texture as a primary compositional material. He holds a PhD in Composition from University College Cork, where he studied with John Godfrey and Jesse Ronneau. His research interests include the music of Morton Feldman and Horatiu Radulescu, spectral and post-spectral composition, alchemy, and bioacoustics.

His works have been performed by: the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, the JACK Quartet, Carin Levine, Pascal Gallois, the Talujon Percussion Ensemble, the Quiet Music Ensemble, and the Crash Ensemble. His electronic music is released on Lamour Records, farpoint Recordings and Fort Evil Fruit. 

Francis Heery website

 

November 2017: Marisa Hoicka (Canada)

Whether on canvas, a performance, or an installation, Marisa Hoicka creates narrative paintings that come to life. She integrates paintings, compelling tactile elements, performance art, interactive video and other electronic media.

She explores, in a surreal yet pragmatic way, young people’s relationships (or lack of) to labour and love – and their insecurities about gender, sexuality and responsibility. Her work reflects people’s never-ending quest for desire and comfort and to reject the undesirable and uncomfortable. Simultaneously disgusting, beautiful and humorous, her creations bridge these relationships’ fantasy and reality.

Hoicka choreographed a solo as part of Singular Bodies at Toronto Dance Theatre. Her “This is Not a Test” was shown on all Air Canada flights as part of the Images Festival’s “Stitches in Time.” Her videos have also been shown in Berlin’s Galerie Kurt Im Hirsch, San Francisco’s MoMA, Oakville Galleries and across Canada.

She mixed painting, performance, and installation in her solos “Nature Morte” at Toronto’s 7a*11d International Performance Art Festival and “Escaping Escapism” at the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery. An installation was also featured in Videodrome at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art. She had a solo show of her paintings at the department of Canadian Heritage. Her persona “Uncle Wink” took part in “The Other Painting Competition” at the Art Gallery of Ontario for Nuit Blanche.

Hoicka has received several Ontario Arts Council grants and a visual art grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. She has a Master of Digital Media from Ryerson University and a BFA in Studio Arts from Concordia University. Her video work is distributed by Vtape.
 
www.marisahoicka.com

 

October 2017: Elizabeth Woods and Kevin Leong (Australia)

Elizabeth Woods and Kevin Leong are Australian artists who embed the arts into the daily lives and habits of the public and communities, and vice-versa. Their current projects range from short documentary films to year-long commitments that involve multiple events created in collaboration with other creative professionals, local community, interest groups, individuals, institutions and government.

They will be resident at the Sirius Arts Centre for the month of October and will be holding a talk to discuss their work and their upcoming project in Cobh on Thursday 12th October.

The artists would like to meet members of the local community who are interested in discussing "The Future". This may be a personal future, of a profession or trade; it may be the future of Cobh, Ireland, the environment or of our race. What is important? If the world is about to change beyond recognition, what should persist and what should change? What would make tomorrow worth living for? What keeps you up at night?

If you are not able to attend the talk and would be interested in meeting Liz and Kevin, they can otherwise be contacted at info@situ.net.au.

Elizabeth & Kevin website

 

September 2017: Danny Bracken (US)

Danny Bracken is a musician and visual artist based in the United States. After finishing a degree in visual arts, he joined Chicago-based ensemble Anathallo, touring extensively with them throughout North America, Europe, and Japan. In 2010 he participated in a unique musicians-in-residence program at The Mattress Factory, which gathered an international group of musicians to write, perform and produce the album A Generous Act. Since 2012 he has collaborated extensively with filmmakers in composing for moving image. He contributed music to the award winning 2013 documentary Blood Brother as well as composed the score of the 2016 film, Woman on Fire. In 2017 he completed his first score for television with the critically acclaimed ABC series, Downward Dog. Bracken currently produces music under the moniker Low Lumens, and released his debut solo record (Dawn/Dusk) with Burnt Toast Vinyl, as well as a forthcoming LP (The Distant, Everyday) in 2017.

http://dannybracken.com/

 

August 2017: Vanessa Daws

Vanessa is a visual artist and avid open water swimmer based in Dublin. Vanessa’s art practice explores place through swimming. ‘Place’ being the watery spaces navigated and swam through, the surrounding littoral space and the social spaces created by this shared activity. Vanessa is interested in why we swim, and how through acclimatisation and adaption we can surprise ourselves and go beyond our expectations.

On September 6th 2016 Vanessa Daws became the first person to swim around Lambay Island in Dublin Bay. This 8k circumnavigational swim took 3.17 hours and was the third and final swim in her project “The Lambay Swim Trilogy”, a series of swims to, about and around Lambay Island. Vanessa uses swimming, conversation, video, sound recordings and drawings to create installation and live art events.

Vanessa has been selected for a 2017 Project Studio in TBGS and has recently been awarded the Docklands Small Grants Award 2017. Vanessa has just finished a Fingal Arts studio residency in Loughshinny Boathouse and prior to that a two month Digital Art Residency at the Fire Station Studios. In 2015 Vanessa was selected for the UCD Art in Science Residency and was given the Neville Johnson Award as part of this residency. Vanessa was a recipient of the Artist in the Community Award from the Arts Council of Ireland & Create in 2013 where she collaborated with the sea swimming community from Malahide, Co Dublin.

Vanessa’s swim projects have taken place in watery spaces as diverse as the frozen Pirita River in Estonia, The President’s Fountain in Bulgaria, the Pacific Ocean, The River Liffey, Trafalgar Square, The Rideau Canal in Canada, The UCD Lake, the Dublin M50 Aqueduct to the Bogs of Ballycroy in Co Mayo.

www.vanessadaws.com

 

August 2017: Lisa O'Neill

Cavan folk-singer and witty story-teller Lisa O’Neill returns to Sirius Arts Centre with a new album, ‘Pothole in the Sky’. If you’ve seen her before you’ll know it’s a performance not to be missed.

This third album follows a witty and charming debut ‘Has An Album’, and the follow-up ‘Same Cloth or Not’ that marked her as a serious artist, a contender, a voice, a forked tongue. These are wonderful songs, unique and full of the sort of glorious individual word-play that could only come from the pen of O’Neill.

Lisa O’Neill has a remarkable voice; a Cavan twang, a growl, a song-call. It can be many things. She needed to make an album about that voice. ‘Pothole in the Sky’ is a recording of “the voice”. The voice is everything for the folk singer – a conduit for the words, the emotion, the thought process. This is no ordinary record.

O’Neill’s voice goes to all sorts of places throughout the course of this album, and the music provided by Emma Smith, Seamus Fogarty, Joseph Doyle, and Mossy Nolan follows her like a dark swirling storm, often bringing to mind the loose impressionism of the Dirty Three. On ‘Planets’ O’Neill delivers her most extraordinary vocal and lyrical performance to date. It is remarkable and on this form she could go toe to toe with Nick Cave at his most fire and brimstone. Except O’Neill’s prose is elemental and mysterious, not angry.  

As any truly great singer knows, it’s not all about those big reaching numbers. There is some truly brave singing on this record. For instance, the odd high-pitched flourishes on ‘Nasty’, or the shrill parlour style singing on ‘Black Sheep’. The latter features some of the best accompaniment too, a mellifluous psychedelic montage that literally sets sail one-minute-thirty in as Lisa goes off on one of her patented hypnotic stream-of-conscious word-play trips. The album closes out on a succession of brilliant songs. ‘The Banjo Spell’ is a tender ode to the aural folk tradition without being throwback. In fact it has a big lush modern feel to it.  And ‘The Hunt’, featuring guest fiddle and banjo from Colm Mac Con Iomaire and Glen Hansard respectively, is just another meandering epic Lisa O’Neill number, twisting and turning and changing its phrasing and tempo to suit the story and accommodate the words. She makes it sound easy. But it’s not.

 At a time when sameness threatens to drain the world of charm and surprise, Lisa O’Neill stands tall for difference, as an outlier with a mission to frame the world as she sees it and to perform it accordingly.                                                

 Joe Breen, Irish Times

 

Pothole in the Sky

Lisa O'Neill Breaking Tunes

 

July 2017: Softday

For over fifteen years Softday, the art-science collaboration of artist Sean Taylor and computer scientist Mikael Fernström, have engaged with issues relating to natural cycles in time, climate change and its global effects. As a collaborative team they use their arts practice to explore relations to and understandings of nature, expressed through sonifications and multimedia artworks and performances. Both artists are interested in exploring ‘the cracks’ between various media and creative genres such as expanded theatre, sound art, socially engaged practice, sculpture, music, dance and the application of new technologies.

Early projects such as Bliain Le Baisteach (A Year of Rainfall) (2000) looked at fluctuating annual rainfall patterns in Ireland. Further, Cóisir an Tsionainn (The Shannon Suite) (2003) focused on the four-year life cycle of the wild Atlantic salmon and the effects of overfishing and pollution on the species ability to survive. Projects such as Nobody leaves till the Daphnia sing (2009) examined the implications of contaminated domestic drinking water supplies in Galway and West Limerick. The Marbh Chrois (Dead Zone) (2010) project addressed the impact of two ‘contested’ marine dead zones as a key stressor on marine ecosystems in Donegal, Ireland.  In 2011 Softday were prizewinners of EUROPE – A SOUND PANORAMA, and performed their work in Karlsruhe at ZKM (Kubus).

In April 2013 Softday premiered ‘Amhrán na mBeach’ (Song of the Bees) in Glenstal Abbey, Murroe, Co. Limerick. In October 2014 they were commissioned by Limerick National City of Culture 2014 to perform ‘Amhrán na mBeach’ - Song of the (Urban) Bees. Recent exhibitions include: 2016/7 Re(Public) Hyde Park Arts Centre, Chicago, USA, 2016. Sonic Arts Waterford (SAW) Festival, Waterford, 2016. EVA International Biennale of Art, Limerick, 2016 and  Et si on s’ était trompé? (What if we got it wrong?) Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, France, 2015. 

 Softday

 

Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh

Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh is a viola player from Dublin. She enjoys playing many genres of music including baroque and folk-based styles but is primarily an improvising player.

The majority of her music is collaborative but recent months have seen a shift in focus towards solo work, primarily pairing the viola with tape delay.  A recording of this music will be released in the coming months on the Fort Evil Fruit label.

Over the past year she has been involved in a range of performances and projects including international concerts with Chicago-based musician Circuit des Yeux, improvised solo playing at Bottlenote’s Bleed and composing and performing music for the production Very Rich Hours which won the Judge’s Choice Award at the Dublin Fringe Festival in September.

She also plays regularly with the bands Woven Skull and Cian Nugent & the Cosmos.

 

https://soundcloud.com/ailbhenicoireachtaigh

 

Mary Conlon

Mary Conlon is a curator based in Limerick, Ireland. She has completed studies at University College Dublin (1996-2001), Universidad de Sevilla (1999-2000), and Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology (2002-2006). She is the third Shinnors Scholar and her PhD in Curatorial Studies at Limerick School of Art and Design focuses on Italo Calvino’s Harvard lectures. Her writings have been published in Irish Arts Review, COLLECTED, Paper Visual Art, and the Visual Artists’ News Sheet.

Conlon is the Founder and Co-Director of Ormston House, a cultural resource centre located in a RAPID* zone in the heart of Limerick city.  She is on the board of directors of EVA International, Ireland’s Biennial of Contemporary Art, and is a Partner of Visual Artists Ireland, providing advocacy and advice to artists. She sits on the Migrant Exploitation Steering Group for thehuman rights organization, Doras Luimní. She is currently international Curator-in-residence at the Aarhus Billedkunstcenter in Denmark.

Recent curatorial projects include Murder Machine (2016), an evolving project co-curated with Christine Eyene as an invited response to Still (The) Barbarians curated by Koyo Kouoh; Against The Current (2015-2016), a solo exhibition by Mark Dion, co-curated with Ian Russell, curator of the David Winton Bell Gallery, Brown University; and PROTOTYPES (2014), a solo exhibition by Dennis McNulty during the inaugural National City of Culture programme at Limerick City Gallery of Art. Also in 2014, she managed the Limerick edition of the Irish tour of The Enclave by Richard Mosse, Ireland’s representation at the 55^thVenice Biennale.

 

May 2017: Matthew Noone

Matthew has a idiosyncratic place in the Irish music scene being the country’s only regular performer of the 23 stringed North Indian lute called sarode.

He has studied North Indian classical music for the last 15 years in Kolkata with Sougata Roy Chowdhury and UK based maestro, K. Sridhar.  Since settling in Ireland in 2006, Noone has recorded and performed with various projects such as THE BAHH BAND & JIGGY and more recently begun to make a name for himself as a performer of Irish traditional music.  He regularly performs with percussionist Tommy Hayes in an duet called AnTara and has toured India with Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill.

After completing an Arts practice PhD in the Irish World Academy in the University of Limerick in 2016, Noone took time out to reflect and record some of his original compositions.  

Drawing on his experience of lo-fi rock, post rock and electronica, Noone decided to record the album on an old four track cassette machine.

The resulting sound captures the mixture of his background and presents the sarode in a new and unique context.  The album was mixed and mastered by Ensemble Eriu’s Jack Talty in Lissycasey.

 

April 2017: Jessamyn Fiore 

Jessamyn Fiore (American b. 1980) is a New York based curator and writer as well the co-director of the Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark. She is the curator of the Jean-Paul Najar Foundation in Dubai, UAE, opening in March, 2015. She was the Director of Thisisnotashop, a not for profit gallery space in Dublin, from 2007-2010. She received a Masters in contemporary art theory, practice, and philosophy from The National College of Art and Design, Dublin, in 2009.

Exhibitions curated include 112 Greene Street: The Early Years (1970–1974) at David Zwirner in New York (2011), which led to her editing the critically acclaimed, eponymous catalogue, published by David Zwirner and Radius Books (2012); and a second exhibition for David Zwirner New York titled Gordon Matta-Clark: Above and Below (2013). Recently, she curated II Machines: Clive Murphy & Trevor Tweeton at the Knockdown Center in Mespeth, Queens (May 2015) and was a partner at Rawson Projects gallery on the Lower East Side (Sep 2014 - May 2015), organizing exhibitions by Nathaniel Mary Quinn and Lilja Birgisdottir among others.

Jessamyn Fiore website  

 

April 2017: Alex Yudzon

Alex Yudzon is a New York based photographer working primarily in the genre of still life. Making elaborate environments that frequently reference art history, Yudzon’s work confronts our perception that the world has slipped into an advanced state of decadence and decline..

Yudzon’s ongoing series titled “The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food” recreates illustrations from a Soviet era cookbook belonging to his mother. By hand making items that are no longer commercially available, like cans of food, tablecloths and designer plates, Yudzon’s photographs look unreal and act to disrupt the linearity between past and present.

In another series, “The Raft of the Medusa”, Yudzon borrows the language of 17th century Vanitas still life painting to create unnerving scenes of sumptuous decay. Using profuse quantities of food in suggestive combinations, Yudzon creates a world both beautiful and revolting. Hand painted scenes or reproductions of famous paintings are used as backdrops to further emphasize the contrast between the idealized depictions in the backgrounds and the entropic arrangements in front of them. Together, these contradictory juxtapositions lend Yudzon’s work a dark, abject humor which both agitates and moderates our anxiety of collapse through overabundance.

Alex Yudzon was originally born in Moscow and moved to the United States at the age of 8. After receiving his BFA in painting from Chelsea College of Art in London, Yudzon moved to New York and began his career as an artist. Since then Yudzon has participated in numerous exhibitions both inside the United States and abroad including at; The Museum of Contemporary Art Miami, The Aluna Foundation of Art, Ein Harod Museum of Contemporary Art in Israel and the Kolkata International Performance Art Festival. Although he has worked with photography throughout his career, in 2015 Yudzon decided to make a permanent switch and work exclusively in that medium. Since then his series “A Room for the Night” has traveled to 3 exhibition venues in Italy and France.

 

March 2017: Petros Chrisostomou

Petros Chrisostomou photographs small-scale, ordinary, ephemeral objects in architectural models that he constructs himself, and then dramatically arranges, often employing lighting and staging conventions of the theatre. With the alteration of scale and reversal of the relationbetween object and environment, between imaginary and real space, his photographschallenge the viewer's visual certainties.

The illusionary effect he achieves highlights theartist's playful approach, which fluctuates between mimicry of the real world and construction of a surreallistic reality.

In his photographs the exuberant assemblage of objects in luxurious interiors, create paradoxical still lifes that parody the traditional memento mori style of the genre. In his worksForever and Skatospore (II), the objects he creates out of Hair, Fungus, fabric and glasses are freed of their ordinary use and become dynamic protagonists. Similarly, the details of the rococo set consist of everyday objects, functioning as contemporary cultural signifiers.

Christosomou's photographs become the field for mixing the high- and the low-brow, mass culture and genre painting, the luxurious and the expendable, as indications of social class distinctions. At the same time, the relations between the real and the imaginary in his oeuvre are a commentary on the mediated images of contemporary mass media that distort the natural and immediate dimension of our relation to reality, determining, among other things, the conditions for viewing and receiving art.

His recent series of works are made with materials collected from stores located in Brooklyn, Afro American hair extensions, grooming products, and Dollar store items. Similarly the environments created to document these objects tell a story –through a lucid observation of Brooklyn’s subcultures- and link a thread throughout the Geographical and social connotations of these works. As a product of Globalization, born in London to Cypriot parents,

Petros Chrisostomou aims to explore the idea of indigenous habitat, by creating these boxes from which to work in, they become symbolic metaphors for a decentralized notion of where we find ourselves culturally grounded, and the spaces that we relate to as home.

Petros Chrisostomou was born in London, 1981. He was a resident on the International
Studio and Curatorial Program, New York. Recent selected exhibitions include FIGURED,
BRIC Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn New York (2012), Plastic Lemons, Spring Projects, London
(2011), Revolver, Galerie Xippas, Montevideo (2010), Artists for Athens, The Breeder/Athens
Playroom, Athens (2010), Fresh Faced and Wild Eyed, The Photographers Gallery, London(2009), In Present Tense-Young Greek Artists, EMST National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (2008).

 

Feb 2017: Sheelagh Broderick (Ire)

Sheelagh Broderick is an artist and researcher. She develops her practice through processes of immersive social engagement. She is interested in the generative potential released when people come together in different configurations. Increasingly she is preoccupied by the idea of the anthropocene (the geological age of humans, named for their planetary impacts) and what it means for politics and art.

http://sheelaghbroderick.com/

 

Amy Perejuan-Capone

Amy Perejuan-Capone lives and works between Perth, Western Australia, and Reykjavik, Iceland (or elsewhere very very north). She graduated with a BA(Fine Art) from Curtin University in 2009 and an Advanced Diploma of Industrial Design from Central Institute of Technology (Perth) in 2014. She creates work under her label Horse On Toast as well as under her own name. The label is about gleeful absurdity and serves as a conceptual guide for Amy’s creative investigations. She draws in detail very normal inorganic objects (such as trucks and budget supermarkets) as an attempt to capture and represent their innate subjectivity. Amy’s limited edition or one-off furniture pieces, ceramics and drawing/paintings exist on a spectrum that spans ideas made manifest (as sculpture) through to traditional object representation (with plenty in between).

 

Peter Broderick (1987, USA)

Although he has primarily made a name for himself in the music world, multi-instrumentalist and composer Peter Broderick is interested in exploring a multi-disciplinary approach to his art practice.

Peter’s passport looks like something of an art piece itself, thick with added pages after having run out of free space for stamps several times. Since 2007 he has traveled the world relentlessly, performing both as a solo act and as a member of various groups, including the renowned Danish band Efterklang.

Several celebrated record labels have invited Peter to release his recorded works, such as Erased Tapes and Bella Union, among others. With each recording he has aimed to reinvent himself, resulting in a diverse catalogue that might very well cause a listener to wonder if two different albums are in fact made by the same Peter Broderick.

Many of Peter’s records are decorated with his own photographs and artwork, and he has also experimented with moving pictures, directing several short films and music videos. One of his favourite ways to be creative is in the kitchen, cooking up edible works of art. The fact that the work vanishes while being consumed goes to demonstrate Peter’s focus on the process of creating, as opposed to only being fixated on the result!

Growing up in the tiny town of Carlton, Oregon, Peter started with private violin lessons at age seven, studying both classical music and folk tunes, many of which originated in Ireland. With this recollection of childhood melodies and his own Irish blood, Peter aims to explore his roots through an on-going residency at the Sirius Arts Centre throughout 2016.

 

www.peterbroderick.net
www.erasedtapes.com
www.bellaunion.com

 

Helen Frosi

Artist's Statement

Helen Frosi’s interests revolve around call and response, improvised activity and ludic principles. Preoccupied with the idea and act of exchange - skills, experiences, objects, memories - her practice is cross-disciplinary and necessitates collaboration.

As a conceptual focus for her creative practice Helen established SoundFjord (the UK’s first project space entirely dedicated to sound) in 2010. It began life as a gallery and venue for curious minds to meet and collaborate. By 2015, SoundFjord had metamorphosised into an extended network, educational and curatorial platform, working in purposefully tangential ways, through ideological cross-pollination and experimental collaboration with like-minded creatives, specialists and organisations.

Recent collaborations include co-founding the London-based Tape Orchestra; co-curating curatorial interventions with Kostis Kylimis as Either Ear; hosting DIY audio-visual events with Leslie Deere as Shorts For All Seasons; co-curating the Full of Noises Festival (Cumbria) as Octopus Collectives’ first curator-in-residence and co-curating Summer Club // Sound with Andie Brown (These Feathers Have Plumes) for V22 (London). Under the moniker Postcards from the Volcano, Helen constructs transmission art pieces and immersive sonic environments with Stephan Barrett. And as SoundHoppers, Helen collaborates with Wajid Yaseen to create sound and listening playgroups for 5 to 11-year-olds.

Helen is currently an honorary research fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London (Unit for Sound Practice Research).

www.soundfjord.org 

 

Ruth Clinton and Niamh Moriarty (IRE)

Ruth Clinton and Niamh Moriarty have been working together since graduating from Fine Art at NCAD in 2010. Recent exhibitions of their work include: Amharc Fhine Gall X - Transhistorial Terrain, joint exhibition with Ella DeBurca, Draíocht, curated by Linda Shevlin, 2015; Foaming at the Mouth 6, visual art spoken word event, Amsterdam, curated by Tracy Hanna & Emer Lynch, 2015; Amid the Deepening Shades, self-ini