Cork County Council and Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre announce partnership Artist Residency for 2024.

Cork County Council and Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre are delighted to announce a partnership residency for artists Patsy Tyrrell & Fiona Boniwell. Taking place in April and May 2024, this partnered residency supports artists seeking opportunities to research and develop their practice, and engage with Uillinn, local and diverse communities and the public. The award includes a studio space for 4 weeks at Uillinn and a stipend of €2,500 each. Both residencies are funded by the Cork County Council Arts Service.

Patsy Tyrrell, a visual artist based in Beara and a recent graduate of Sculpture and Expanded Practice from NCAD, has been awarded the Cork County Council / Uillinn Artist Residency from April 2nd to May 4th, 2024. For her residency, Patsy will build a body of work that investigates perception of place and landscape through embodied drawing and performance, developing drawings, reflections, and moments of performance, while inviting others to engage in this process with her via drawing and dialogue. Her practice is rooted in the importance of the invisible links that bind us together and to the landscape in softness, stillness and small encounters and moments of support. Her work currently explores how these moments of relation to each other and to our landscape can change our perception of the space around us.

Fiona Boniwell has been awarded the Bealtaine Cork County Council / Uillinn Artist Residency from May 1st to May 31st, 2024. Organised in association with Age & Opportunity’s nationwide Bealtaine Festival which celebrates the arts and creativity as we age, Fionas’ project, Running to a Pause, will share her work with the public via several events over the course of her residency, including a Bealtaine event at Uillinn. Fiona 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, focusing recently on martial arts in tandem with her visual arts practice. Fiona will explore this theme through studio-based drawing sessions along with a programme of participatory drawing and movement workshops. Her goal is to create a new body of work arising from the research and collaborative studio sessions at Uillinn.

Welcoming the announcement of the residencies the Mayor of the County of Cork, Cllr. Frank O’Flynn said “we welcome the continuing partnership between Cork County Council and the West Cork Arts Centre.  This partnership aims to promote community engagement in the arts in West Cork and supports the career progression of artists in the county.  Patsy Tyrell and Fiona Bonniwell are outstanding creative artists.  I wish them the very best and I look forward to seeing the results of their work.  I would also like to take this opportunity to thank West Cork Arts Centre for the provision of studio space and administrative support for this programme”.