Aodhán Rilke Floyd ‘Elective Affinities’
1 July to 20 July 2019

Uillinn West Cork Arts Centre in partnership with West Cork Literary Festival, have invited Aodhán Rilke Floyd to take up residency at Uillinn studios this summer to write in response to the two programmes both at Uillinn and West Cork Literary Festival, on the theme of ‘Collaboration’, a recurring theme in both our programmes.

‘Art writing for me is a point of entry to a conversational world, a world where criticality and fellow feeling are equally important. In the best conversation the feeling is expansive and, at its very best, conversation is about a shared exploration of reality. Art writing should be exciting because it’s the genre most likely to be borne of conversations taking place in studios and, in my case, is, at heart, motivated by a sympathetic engagement with the ideas and processes that lead artists to create their work.’

During this inaugural critical writing residency at Uillinn Aodhán will embark on two writing projects, both of which take up the theme of the nature of collaboration in the artistic sphere.

The first, ‘Plus One’, is in partnership with this year’s West Cork Literary Festival in Bantry and is simply a series of open invitations to attend a ticketed event in my company as guests of the festival. ‘PlusOne’ is something of an experiment in ‘live writing’ and may take any form of response we decide or as suggests itself. The idea is to take the playful constraint of blogging as a prompt for a stimulating ‘real world’ exchange

Stephen James Smith - Saturday 13 July 2019
Anne Carson - Sunday 14 July 2019
Liz Berry, Doireann Ní Ghríofa & Jessica Traynor's- Wednesday 17 July 2019
Esi Edugyan & Steven Price - Wednesday 17 July 2019
Joseph O’Connor & Paraic O’Donnell - Friday 19 July 2019

The second, ‘Elective Affinities’, is an opportunity to connect with a community of interest at Uillinn in a more considered way, with an eye to building on the relationships and connections that form. ‘Writing here is in service to an ongoing critical dialogue and my residency would be research towards a possible text about an artist currently in residence or, perhaps, on an area of mutual interest and inquiry. I’d be especially interested in exploring creative affinities and interrelationships between media.’

Born in Dublin, Aodhán Rilke is a visual artist and art writer, living in West Cork. In his studio near Inchigeelagh he offers occasional drawing workshops and hosts a regular life drawing session. A graduate in Fine Art from IADT, Aodhán has an M.Phil in Art History from TCD and his approach to creative process is informed by both strands of study and marked by a strong interest in the history and theory of drawing. As part of an informal studio network of artists, he has been involved in independent group exhibitions in non-art spaces in Dublin, Cork and Kilkenny. He has also written exhibition texts for the Molesworth gallery in Dublin and, most recently, an essay to accompany Patrick Redmond’s end-of-residency exhibition in 2018 at the Periphery Space in the Gorey School of Art.

Follow Aodhán http://uillinnwestcorkartscentre.blogspot.com/

West Cork Literary Festival takes place in Bantry Friday 12th - Friday 19th July 2019 https://www.westcorkmusic.ie/literary-festival/

West Cork Arts Centre is proud to be supported by the Arts Council and Cork County Council.