sight: sound: site
Friday 25 July - Saturday 9 August
An exhibition of lens-based and sonic artworks responding to the West Cork landscape.
Topia is an interactive gestural instrument, in which its sonic content is derived from the soundscape of West Cork. Using manipulations of some of West Cork’s most impressive soundscapes, the participant had the ability to navigate a sound landscape developed as a result of the dynamic acoustic environment of the region. Skibbereen native Liam Cialis and Emmet O’Donnell, originally from Wicklow, are recent graduates of the University of Limerick. They performed with Topia at the opening of the exhibition.
Solargraphy is a lensless photographic process that allows for extremely long exposures. Each pinhole camera is exposed, in-situ, for a duration ranging from months to years, recording the transit of the sun from east to west. The exhibition included a selection of solargraphic images created by Michael Stephens, who worked in collaboration with local artist Sheelagh Broderick as part of a larger project. Included are images shot on Sherkin Island and also a series created by installing pin-hole cameras in various positions facing the new West Cork Arts Centre site during the early days of the build.
Materials is a film by David Ian Bickley, produced through a Project Award from the Arts Council of Ireland. Based on the idea of a spiritual line drawn across the Irish landscape, this piece mirrors a symbolic journey. Materials uses a number of cutting-edge cinematic techniques and devices to "play" with time and space, producing a powerful and emotive destabilising effect upon the viewer. The film is made up of seven segments, each backed by an evocative ambient score also produced by David in conjunction with a number of leading figures from the modern electronic music scene including producers Tom Green (The Orb, Another Fine Day) and Dare Mason (Noctorum).
Bleak Paradise is a documentary film by Helen Selka which looks at Long Island, also known as Inis Fada, which is situated in Roaring Water Bay just off the south coast of Ireland, close to the town of Schull, West Cork. It is one of the seven inhabited islands of West Cork. Many of the islanders are connected to a way of life that goes back centuries and Bleak Paradise looks at some of the day-to-day concerns, activities and memories of these individuals, most of whom were born there. Long Island contributes to West Cork’s rich cultural heritage, not only through these residents, but also through its returning holidaymakers who feel closely connected to the unique landscape and natural beauty of its situation.
Bleak Paradise was made with financial assistance from Cork County Council and Leader / Comhar na nOileán Teo
Fathom
Harvest Films | 2013 | 21 mins
“What did we do? Sometimes we’d sit. More times we’d sit and think.”
Dick O’Driscoll, Last Principal Keeper, Fastnet Lighthouse, 1982-1991
Fathom was filmed on the Fastnet Lighthouse in 2012. The film is an experimental documentary which blends original footage with archive film to create a meditative work on isolation and thinking and to invoke in the viewer the idea that we are, in an important sense, the places that we inhabit.
“My sense is that as we go forward into the so-called ‘information age’, paradoxically, we recognise less and less because we value experience less and less. By the time I was in my teens, I was aware that there was less silence in the world, less empty space. I developed a nostalgic yearning for those empty, silent spaces I had never experienced but which I knew existed.” Roni Horn, Contemporary Artists, 2000.
Members '14
Saturday 28 June - Saturday 19 July
West Cork Arts Centre’s annual members’ exhibition is a group exhibition celebrating art in West Cork. This year's was the thirtieth, and final, members' exhibition to be held at West Cork Arts Centre's current premises on North Street, ahead of the move to our new building later this year.
Back in 1985, Skibb '85, as it was then called, was the show that launched West Cork Arts Centre. This exhibition was a tribute to all the artists who have contributed to the great success of the members' exhibition in its many incarnations stretching back four decades, to even before the West Cork Arts Centre itself was born. It featured archive materials and a return to the salon format of work hung floor to ceiling throughout the gallery. The exhibition featured more than 250 artworks including painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, print and mixed media work by emerging and established artist members, including a few who also exhibited back in ‘85.
BA Visual Art
Degree Show 2014
Saturday 31 May – Wednesday 18 June
A showcase of artwork from 2014’s BA Visual Art graduating students. The BA Visual Art is an innovative honours degree programme delivered on Sherkin Island by Dublin Institute of Technology in partnership with Sherkin Island Development Society and West Cork Arts Centre.
The graduating students were; Finola Cooney, Sue Crellin McCarthy, Edwin Cridland, Tim Davis, Mary Finn, Barbara Hopkins Reen, Mary Jordan, Nicola Kelly, Christine McAuliffe, Etaoin Melville, Rob Monaghan, Caoimhe Pendred, Tara O’Donoghue, Mona O’Driscoll, Rita O’Driscoll, Nina Sanctuary and Fran Woolf.
Bealtaine
Celebrating creativity as we age
Saturday 3 - Saturday 24 May
West Cork Arts Centre celebrated this year's Bealtaine Festival, the Irish national arts festival, celebrating creativity as we age, with a multidisciplinary exhibition showcasing the many programmes and projects with older people that take place at the Centre and throughout the region. Involving nine facilitating artists, working in twelve venues, through both Arts for Health and Arts for an Active Mind programming, this multidisciplinary exhibition included poetry, music, painting, drawing and sculpture, reflecting the creative experiences of the many participants.
Abecedary
Children's Exhibition 2014
Saturday 5 - Saturday 26 April
West Cork Arts Centre's annual Children's Exhibition 2014 showcases artwork by ten primary school groups involved in our Primary Schools Classroom-based Programme in partnership with West Cork Education Centre.
Last autumn, the participants visited Alphabet, an exhibition of print and sculpture, by Cork Printmakers and other artists at WCAC. They went on to develop their own projects inspired by what they'd seen, exploring alphabets, letters and words through visual art media. The resulting exhibition is a bright and colourful celebration of the building blocks of language.
Aftermath
An exhibition of artwork by second level students from across West Cork
Friday 7 – Saturday 29 March 2014
This year's exhibition included artwork from Coláiste Pobail Bheanntraí, Mercy Heights Secondary School, Skibbereen, Sacred Heart Secondary School, Clonakilty, and Schull Community College in response to the exhibition Three Days Later by Magnhild Opdøl.
The exhibition also included an installation project created as a collaboration between visual artist and Schools and Youth Coordinator Alison Cronin and a group of Transition Year students from Mercy Heights Secondary School and St Fachtna's De La Salle, Skibbereen.
Practice
What happens when artists and children work together?
18 January - 22 February 2014
Practice is the first national touring exhibition of work by artists and children in Ireland. Showcasing the work of artists and children created in formal education and early years settings, the exhibition provides an insight into a range of projects by leading artists in the field - Helen Barry, Ann Donnelly, Naomi Draper, Ann Henderson, Maree Hensey, Fiona Kelleher and Christine Mackey.
The artists and children have collaborated to create diverse and imaginative artwork in a variety of media including photography, drawing, painting, video, installation and sound. Some of the work is made by children, some by the artists, and much of it is made by both in response to each other.
The tour has now carried on to axis, Ballymun, Dublin and then to The Model in Sligo.
For more information please see the Practice.ie website.
