Bealtaine 2024 at Uillinn, Celebrating the arts and creativity as we age

There is so much going on this month at Uillinn West Cork Arts Centre in celebration of the national Bealtaine Festival, it’s hard to know where to begin, with free events at the Centre and around West Cork. Bealtaine Festival takes place each May throughout Ireland and involves thousands of participants, community groups and organisations, coordinated by Age and Opportunity.

Bealtaine Exhibition at Uillinn
1 to 31 May Uillinn Stairwell and Corridor Galleries, Free, no booking required.

This year’s Bealtaine Exhibition at Uillinn features a new collection of work from Arts for an Active Mind reflecting their personal experiences of ‘Lough Ine’ taking inspiration from the heritage and cultural uniqueness of the landscape.

The exhibition will also showcase a selection of work produced in the last year through Arts for Health Partnership Programme including original drawings from ‘A Life Lived’ poetry and drawing publication. ‘A Life Lived’ evolved from a love of sharing stories in all their forms, and a desire to communicate these stories to family, friends, and the wider community. Working with writer, Elizabeth Rose Murray, and visual artist, Sarah Ruttle, as part of the Arts for Health Partnership Programme West Cork, participants from Schull Community Hospital, Skibbereen Community Hospital, and St Joseph’s Unit Bantry General Hospital, brought their conversations and stories to life.

Using the poem Unlegendary Heroes by Mary O’Donnell as inspiration, Elizabeth and participants worked together to create group poems in a similar format, to reflect individual and collective experiences. These poems were then shared by Sarah to inspire participants in their drawings, exploring touch, movement, and portraiture. The completed work represents the communities that connected through this project and show how, in the words of one of our contributors, ‘a life lived is a life loved’.

A series of delicate and distinctive embroidery works devised in conversation of ‘Favourite Things’ created with residents at Skibbereen Community Hospital working with artist Sharon Dipity. Beginning with collages then paintings traced or drawn freehand onto muslin cloth with fabric pens completed with embroidery silks and wool stitched into to embellish.

‘A Dive in Line’ is a beautifully restrained publication celebrating a small number of people living with Parkinson’s disease and their relationship with art and artist Aine Rose. The new publication by Aine Rose, shares her research and processes from the commissioned residency as part of Arts for Health Partnership Programme. The research project took place over Winter 2023 through Spring 2024, in Dunmanway Day Care Centre and Dunmanway Community Hospital in West Cork.

‘The Dunmanway Sessions’ is a collection of songs performed by residents at Dunmanway Community Hospital and Dunmanway Day Care between November 2022 and April 2023. Songs are sung acapella in English and Irish, and have been simply recorded without frills in the hospital and day care settings by contemporary folk artist Lewis Barfoot during Arts for Health weekly sessions. The songs are largely traditional folk songs from across Ireland, with many favorites including "Danny Boy” and “The Inchigeelagh Lass” which were learnt by the residents in their youth. The collection also includes a few stories behind the songs and the odd poem. 

This beautiful archive exists as a legacy of the aural heritage of unaccompanied singing across Ireland. The Dunmanway Sessions will be available to stream for free on the Arts for Health Soundcloud page. 

And finally a series of information panels mapping three new public artworks made with Arts for Health participants and healthcare staff working with artist Michael Greenlaw. The three projects each respond uniquely to their context: ‘Through the Window’ in the garden of Dunmanway Community Hospital, ‘Dunmanway Life’ a mosaic on the ramp entrance to the day care centre in Dunmanway and ‘Beara Map’ at Mural work in Castletownbere Community Hospital.

In the Picture, goes on tour for 2024
1st May 11am to 1pm in the Maritime Hotel
Contact Catherina on 087 9103036 for further details.

May’s Memory Café in Bantry will feature ‘In the Picture – on tour’, an Arts for Health Partnership Programme which usually takes place in Uillinn Galleries.  Attendees of the cafe will get a unique opportunity to have artworks brought to the cafe, opening up conversation around the ideas brought forward by looking and exploring the selected artworks. Facilitated by Sarah Ruttle, the session will feature artwork from a major retrospective exhibition by Brian Lalor.

The Retrospective Exhibition of the Work of Brian Lalor,  27 July to 12 October 2024, will include prints, publications, watercolours, drawings, sculpture, photographs, objects, artifacts and audio-visual presentations, curated by art historian Vera Ryan.

Trained as an artist and architect, Brian Lalor is a master printmaker, a superb draughtsman, an art historian, a travel writer, editor and memoirist. In Lalor‘s work, the Arts and Crafts Movement’s philosophy of collaboration and of the artist as writer as well as practitioner is discernible. He is of the generation of Irish artists who provided subsidy within the arts sector through their initiatives. His role in Graphic Studio, Dublin (as member, chairperson and historian), and his parallel role in Cork Printmakers, in Blue House Gallery and in Ballydehob Arts Museum as founder director of both, and his donation of a significant historic print collection to the National Gallery of Ireland make him a leader in the Irish art community.

 

 

 

 

Dance into Spring!
with Flavie Chimenes in Uillinn Dance Studio 
Saturday 4 May, 10:30am to 11:30am

Booking on Eventbrite here: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/891578965687?aff=oddtdtcreator

A once off dance session to get the body moving into spring. A gentle, low intensity and easy to follow dance class, ideal for older active people. It is a great way to improve flexibility, balance, heart health, circulation, coordination and general wellbeing. It is a lovely way to meet other like minded people and be part of a community. 

Bealtaine Artist in Residence at Uillinn
Each year Cork County Council in partnership Uillinn West Cork Arts Centre invite an open call for artists over 50 years old to take part in a month-long residency at Uillinn, to celebrate Bealtaine. 

Fiona Boniwell Running to a Pause…
1 to 31 May with Open Studio on Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday 10:00am to 4:00pm.
No booking required, but do call ahead if travelling from a distance.

Running to a Pause, a pause for thought and reflection. In this multidisciplinary visual art project, Fiona Boniwell seeks to examine the theme of physical movement and her changing relationship with it as it relates to her own body over time. Fiona has always been physically active, recently focusing on the Korean martial art of Kuk Sool Won martial arts in tandem with her visual arts practice. During her residency at Uillinn in 2024, Fiona will explore this theme through studio-based drawing sessions with a view to creating a new body of work arising from the research and collaborative studio sessions at Uillinn.

Running to a Pause…Gestural Drawing Workshop

Saturday 11 May, 2pm to 4pm 

Booking on Eventbrite here: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/888295173777?aff=oddtdtcreator

Fiona will facilitate a participatory gestural drawing workshop. The two-hour workshop will begin with simple breathing and stretching exercises followed by a guided life drawing session during which some of Fiona’s peers from her martial art practice will perform movements and hold poses. When responding to the models through drawing, the focus will be on capturing gesture and a sense of movement rather than on figurative representation. That said, participants should feel free to draw how they wish.

Fiona’s intention is to communicate a sense of accessibility and inclusion for both aspects of this workshop. It is suitable for all levels, both in terms of movement and drawing experience.

As the workshop involves both physical movement and the use of potentially messy materials, participants are advised to wear loose comfortable clothing. We will use charcoal and graphite on paper when drawing. Participants are welcome to bring along any preferred personal drawing materials.

An Evening of Grá at Uillinn
Friday 24 May, 6pm
Free, all LGBTQ+ community  welcome, no booking required

Salt and Pepper, Uillinn’s creative collective for older LGBTQ+, invite the wider rainbow community to an evening of ‘Grá’. 

Called, Salt and Pepper for older people who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Trans or a sprinkle of all those terms and shake of others. Artist Toma McCullim who will lead the project explains, ’Salt and Pepper because we are at the time of life when our hair is starting to speckle but we are also the essential spice of life! 

From February through to May, regular Salt & Pepper sessions have taken place at Uillinn, and in Cork, with members of the collective collaboratively curating a new body of work from the Crawford Gallery Collection, celebrating LGBTQ+ community and culture.

Facilitated by artist Toma McCullim the collective will be inviting all ages to join them in an evening of ideas, plans, and dreams for their 2025 exhibition at Uillinn. As Toma describes, ‘we will be sharing some of the ways we have engaged with the collection throughout our curation project. We hope we will be inspiring all colours of the rainbow spectrum to a vibrant older age.’

About the artists

Flavie Chimènes has been a Zumba instructor for 14 years and love to share her passion of music and dance, she has been working all around West Cork, in Schools , community centres, nursing homes, gyms and more. Originally from Nice, France she is celebrating her 20 years in Clonakilty this year. 

Toma McCullim has a 1st class BA (hons) Degree in Anthropology of Art from the University of East Anglia and has an MA in Arts Process from the Crawford College of Art and Design, Cork. She has been awarded grants from Create/ Arts Council and the Cork County Arts Dept. for her participative arts work. Her own work has shown nationally and internationally.

Sarah Ruttle Tyrone born visual artist Sarah is a graduate of Textiles from DJCAD Dundee, Scotland. Based in West Cork she creates work using illustration, print, and paper art. Illustration has become an important part of her solo work, developing contemporary portraiture, drawing on her experience of working within participatory arts. Creating characters influenced by her passion for photography, pattern, and texture, she hopes to make intimate and compelling images, which capture humanity, emotion, and courage.
Collaboration is central to her participatory practice, developing projects both with other artists and participants within an Arts and Health context. Sarah has worked as part of the Arts for Health Partnership Programme, West Cork artist team since 2008. With experience of developing projects within the community and in acute mental health settings.

Micheal Greenlaw is originally from Scotland but now lives in West Cork. He is a graduate of Drawing and Painting from Edinburgh College of Art and and spent 40 years working as a community artist in Craigmillar, Edinburgh – facilitating and managing art projects and festivals. As an artist and campaigner, Michael has always advocated for social justice. He was the lead artist of Artists for Justice and Peace, painting over 200 topical murals in central Edinburgh over a 34 year period.

Sharon Dipity graduated from Goldsmiths College, University of London, 1986, with a B.A. Honours degree in Textiles; and U.C.E, Birmingham, 2001, with a Postgraduate Certificate in Scenography. She works across the media of drawing, sculpture, installation, printmaking, painting, textiles, and performance. She has exhibited in solo and group shows in Ireland and Europe, most recently at Working Artist Studios, Ballydehob, with her solo show ‘Leap of faith’. Sharon’s work is in several private collections. In 2014, Sharon was commissioned by HSE South Cork Arts and Health Programme to create a series of artworks for Blackrock Hall Primary Care Centre. Sharon is the recipient of several arts bursaries from The Arts Council of Ireland and was awarded residencies at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Mayo in 2018 and The Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Co. Monaghan in 2010, with bursaries from Cork County Council; at The Cill Rialaig Project, Kerry, 2011; and at Uillinn, West Cork Arts Centre, 2016 and 2017. She attended CREATE Professional Development Course for Artists working in Health Care Settings in 2008. Sharon has worked on the Arts for Health Programme since 2007.

Fiona Boniwell is a visual artist based in Kinsale, Ireland. She studied in London graduating from Kingston University with a BA Hons in Fine Art.
Drawing is the primary focus of her art practice. As well as large-scale drawings, her work includes collaborative illustration projects, murals, comics, and zines. In addition, Fiona is an experienced art workshop facilitator with the teaching of drawing and comic process being an important element of her art practice. She also teaches the Korean martial art of Kuk Sool Won in her local area.