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The touring exhibition Cré had its official opening on Saturday 20th April at 5pm at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation. Timothy O’Neill, Calligrapher and Art Historian officially opened the exhibition in attendance was His Excellency, Mr. Norio Maruyama, Ambassador of Japan to Ireland.
Discussing the artists work with His Excellency, Mr. Norio Maruyama, Ambassador of Japan to Ireland
The Irish rural landscape is shaped by wetlands: raised bogs formed in the midlands region while mountain blanket bogs define Ireland’s Atlantic seaboard. Over ten millennia sphagnum mosses and plant debris have accumulated at a rate of 1mm per year, fuelled by the relentless rain approaching from the Atlantic Ocean. This slow process changed the Irish landscape gradually but surely over time. Human intervention contributed further to this change, using turf as a domestic and industrial fuel source and harvesting peat as a growing medium. Accelerated by machine cutting, however, more than a third of Irish wetlands are now lost through cutting for turbary. Now our understanding and use of boglands needs to change again, given their crucial role as carbon sinks in the age of climate collapse.
The exhibition draws attention to human interaction with the Irish boglands, focusing on the folklore, mythology, traditions and the materiality associated with the bogs of Uíbh Ráthach. For this collaborative project, Karen Hendy brought together artists and performers working with each other, often outside the comfort zone of their familiar work environments and teams - a process that sparked creative dialogue across disciplines: painting, photography, poetry, calligraphy and performative drawing - marks created by dancers in charcoal on paper scrolls. They all take their inspiration from dance movements that take the repetitive, almost ritualistic task of turf cutting as a starting point. The Irish word Cré means both earth and clay but also refers to system of belief or principles.
Tá portaigh lárnach i gcruthú taobh tíre na hÉireann: cruthaíodh portaigh arduithe i lár na tíre agus is bratphortach an gné is suntasaí de chósta Atlantach na tíre. Thar thréimhse 10,000 bliain leagadh síos bruscar de chaonaigh portaigh agus plandaí eile, ag ráta 1mm in aghaidh na bliana, é ar fad á thiomáint ag báisteach ag teacht ón Atlantach. D’athraigh an próiseas seo an taobh tíre go mall thar na blianta. Chuir gníomhaíocht daonna leis an athrú seo, trí feidhm a bhaint as móin mar bhreosla tí agus tionsclaíochta, chomh maith le móin a bheith á bhaint mar ábhar garraíodóireachta. Ach mar gheall ar bhaint móna le meaisíní, tá breis is trian de phortaigh na hÉireann caillte don ngearradh faoin am seo. Anois, mar gheall ar a dtábhacht mar umair carbóin i ré seo an athrú aeráide, tá gá againn le athrú tuisceana agus úsáide i leith na bportach.
Caitheann an taispeántas seo súil ar phlé daonna le portaigh na tíre, ag díriú ar bhéaloideas, miotaseolaíocht, traidisiún agus ábharthacht phortaigh Uíbh Ráthaigh. Don dtogra comhghníomach seo, chruinnigh Karen Hendy ealaíontóirí agus oirfidigh ag obair lena chéile, go minic ar shlite nach bhfuil said i dtaithí orthu – rud a spreag comhrá cruthaíoch thar dhisciplíní eagsúla: péintéireacht, griangrafadóireacht, filíocht, peannaireacht agus liníocht gníomhúil – rianta a d’fhág rinceoirí ar ghualach a bhí spréite ar scrollaí. Baineann siad ar fad inspioráid as gluaiseachtaí rince a ghlacann mar phointe tosaigh an tsaothair agus an athshaothair deasghnáthúil a bhaineann go minic le gearradh na móna.
The exhibition draws attention to human interaction with the Irish boglands, focusing on the folklore, mythology, traditions and the materiality associated with the bogs of Uíbh Ráthach. For this collaborative project, Karen Hendy brought together artists and performers working with each other, often outside the comfort zone of their familiar work environments and teams - a process that sparked creative dialogue across disciplines: painting, photography, poetry, calligraphy and performative drawing - marks created by dancers in charcoal on paper scrolls. They all take their inspiration from dance movements that take the repetitive, almost ritualistic task of turf cutting as a starting point. The Irish word Cré means both earth and clay but also refers to system of belief or principles.
The exhibition will be exhibited at Kenmare Buttermarket until December 2023 and will then tour the rest of Ireland starting in January 2024 at An Gailearaí in Donegal and The Ballinglen Arts Foundation Mayo in April 2024.
Contributing artists are Paddy Bushe, Tim O’Neill, John Minihan, Alex Boyd, Karen Hendy, Holger Lonze, Joanne Barry, Anne O’Donnell and Jonathan Kelliher.
Land, a mixed summer show
8 July – 13 August 2023
Artists including Katherine Boucher Beug, Edwina Bracken, Audrey Fleming, Karen Hendy, Con Kelleher, Susan Montgomery, Noël O’Callaghan, Danny Osborne, Aisling Roche and Mary Sheehan. Opened by poet Paddy Bushe whose crafted and inspiring introduction added to everyone’s appreciation of the exhibition: even some artists admitted to an enhanced perception of their own work following his interpretation.
Over thirty people attended our medieval bell making workshop here near Portmagee as part of this year’s Culture Night. Holger Lonze, Barry and myself poured two bronze handbells, based on finds of the 8th-10th C., during the day and a third one after dark that unfortunately did not turn out. The authentic medieval foundry set-up was a clay pit furnace, dug in the morning and fuelled with charcoal and a set of bag bellows. Despite problems with (assuming) contaminated metal, we melted a total of 6kg of bronze during the event. Demonstrations in making 6th C. iron handbells took place between the pours. The rich early Christian Heritage of the Iveragh peninsula provided the historic context of the event which was kindly supported and promoted by Culture Night 2022 and Kerry Co. Co. Arts Office.
Description of the work
Title: Tectonic
Size: 130cm h x 120cm w
Medium: mixed media including peat, hessian, acrylic paint on board.
This piece is dedicated to all women who took part in war especially on the island of Ireland. Often women would risk their lives by delivering messages in many different ways to combatants during War of Independence, sometime cycling to meet rebels working in the bogs, carrying messages hidden in the spouts of billycans or their garments.
Materials in this painting are suggestive of sacks used for gathering turf in the bogs with motifs relating to the topography and random road layouts around townlands used as alternative routes to deliver the messages.
The material is deliberately manipulated and a joined seam on the left of the composition evokes the clandestine underground activity and segregation within periods of war. Peat and bullets inserted under the border along with red paint are burned onto the surface of the painting to conjure the peril associated with such undertakings. The sacking is incidentally stamped with the number ‘1795’, by chance coinciding with the run-up to the United Irishmen rising and the foundation of the Orange Order. Ultimately, however, the work represents a more personal tribute to the strength and courage of the artist’s grandmother and other Irish women who rose to the challenge of extraordinary times during wars.
Reticulum series
A series of works undertaken in 2019 using Bog peat and bog water to create uncontrolled random and interesting marks, with the slow drying process and the use of organic pigments from the landscape, the pieces make for unique interesting and random works, the process of deliberately forming circles with the water (ideas of bog holes which were seen as access to the unknown/invisible worlds or places of ritualistic burial sites. Some of the work was exhibited as part of the Skibbereen Arts festival 2019 and I am continuing to work further on this series….
Recently I have been working with natural pigments, bog peat/ash and experimenting with making my own inks (walnut and Oak). I have spent the week here at Annaghmakerrig mixing inks with materials such as peat from the Irish Bogland and exploring new ways of mark making. Using the natural reaction of the bog water with the inks along with the peat dust I then laid down maps over the abstract images. I have been mixing the mark making of Nimmo’s maps. Alexander Nimmo was the first person commissioned to map the bogland area of the Iveragh peninusla in Kerry, Ireland. The uncontrolled reactions of the inks created by the bog water and the sealing of the pigments and peat dust with gum arabic and egg tempera to create random abstract and unusual reticulations over a long drying process make for interesting areas to develop in the work.
Delighted to have been awarded a Visual Artist’s fellowship award to Vernmont Studio Centre in June 2020 in the US. Really looking forward to travelling with my work.
https://vermontstudiocenter.org
After receiving the inaugural Artist in Residence for ‘Siamsa Tire’ in June 2017, my initial idea was to develop a piece of work/s or an installation based on the ethos of the National Folk Theatre, using materials that both relate to my own practice and would be of relevenace to the the troupe and its past. Initially I decided to work with the dancers in relation to the traditional style of dancing which was relevant to the Kerry based Folk Theatre group. The style was introduced by the dance master Jeremiah Molyneaux, born in 1883, who later became affectionately known as ‘Munnix’.
I have been working with the dancers of the National Folk Theatre of Ireland at Siamsa Tíre since 2017 on a drawing performance/installation. We began by tracking the movement of the footsteps for the Blackbird set dance, a tradtitional dance using the Munnix style of dance using natural materials, resulting in large scrolls made by the dancers own marks from the pattern of the Blackbird dance. Since then we have been using somatic expression to explore cultural traditions and fusing them with environmental issues by way of a performance-based drawing with materials from the landscape including peat, sand and charcoal.
Delighted to have been selected as Artist in Residence with Siamsa Tire National Folk Theatre of Ireland. I will be working with the Folk Theatre for two months. Working in the performance environment of Siamsa Tire and the Folk Theatre will allow me to explore themes relating to my work along with the ethos of the group and to develop new applications and angles for my work, particularly in response to concepts of the vernacular in Ireland, both past and contemporary with a focus on environmental issues with the use of unorthodox materials such as plastics to highlight the destructive aspect of the world that we live in today.
http://www.siamsatire.com/gallery/visual-artist-residency
“The residency at Siamsa Tíre is a great opportunity for me as a visual artist to explore new avenues of enquiry. It stimulates dialogue between various artforms and allows cross-over from one medium to another. Irish folklife traditions and rural culture has always influenced my work, and this residency at Siamsa Tire will allow me to develop this connection further.’
Delighted to have won the Tyrone Guthrie Bursary from Kildare County Council for 2015
Nearshore
9 May – 11 June | Opening: 8 May at 7pm
The James O’Driscoll Gallery, West Cork Arts Centre, North Street, Skibbereen, Co. Cork
Nearshore is an exhibition of work inspired by the indented, west Cork and south Kerry coasts – a coastline of peninsulas, estuaries, harbours and islands, where sea and land meet at gravelly and sandy beaches, mudflats and cliffs as well as at piers, docks and slipways. The adjacency of water gives a number of distinctive characteristics to this region. The erosive power of the sea results in particular types of landforms, such as sand dunes, and estuaries. Biologically, the ready availability of water enables a greater variety of plant and animal life, and particularly the formation of extensive wetlands. In addition, the local humidity due to evaporation and the influence of the Gulf Stream creates a microclimate supporting unique types of organisms. These coastal regions are border-lands defined by the ever-changing weather.
The exhibition includes fired clay wall works by Cormac Boydell, an installation piece highlighting environmental destruction of the landscape by Karen Hendy and John Kingerlee and three-dimensional ceramic forms by Kathleen Standen.
WCAC acknowledges the financial support of the Arts Council in making this event possible.
Producing the replica of the Bangor Bell in collaboration with sculptor Holger Lonze
North Down Museum in Bangor commissioned two replicas of the 9th century Bangor Bell found at St. Columbanus' Bangor Abbey site in 1780, using authentic medieval processes for their fabrication. An exciting challenge as the bell is 15" high and weights more than 10kg! After making the waxes, Karen completed the intricate decoration and gave the pieces a first mould coat in the clay, sand and horse dung mix in early February. Seven more coats were added over the following three weeks and three moulds were fired and wrapped in hessian with clay slip. We cast the bells last week and they are now ready for delivery to the museum for public display. The process gave valuable insights into the making of mediaeval insular handbells and helped to resolve some of the mysteries of the Bangor Bell.
Working on a large scale installation piece for exhibition
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