The Parade Press Prints

The Parade Press Community Collaborative Residency
The Parade Press Prints
24 March to 21 April 2018

An exhibition of prints, sketches and artefacts created during The Parade Press Community Collaborative Residency, commissioned by Uillinn for St. Patrick’s Day 2018.
Community collaborative artists Michael Greenlaw and Charlotte Donovan spent six weeks in residence Studio 3 in Uillinn working together, and with groups and volunteers, to create The Parade Press: a giant, fantastical printing machine which rolled through the streets of Skibbereen on St. Patrick’s Day.

This exhibition shows the great diversity of prints, created during printmaking workshops facilitated by Charlotte, utilising a real printing press installed for the project.  These workshops were open to the public, while she also worked with existing Uillinn groups – Arts for an Active Mind, and Art Club.  A portable printing press visited Skibbereen Hospital, and Arts for Health artist Sharon Dipity facilitated hospital patients to contribute their own prints to the project.

A selection of 50 prints were reproduced and these ‘prints-of-print’s were distributed to the parade viewers as the giant printing press rolled by.  Over 1500 prints were handed out by costumed print distributors, wearing custom hand-printed aprons and bags.

The exhibition also features the top of The Parade Press and some of the artefacts from the machine –decorative and moving parts with local historical and cultural references (including the O’Donovan brothers rowing away from the Baltimore pirates) – as well as some of Michael’s sketches and plans.
Photographs taken throughout the progress of the project are featured on The Parade Press Instagram account @theparadepress.  For further information about the project, please email theparadepress@gmail.com