William Bock
Land Walks Land Talks Land Marks
29 February to 4 April 2020 (extended until reopening due to Covid-19) - see our online platforms for access
Gallery II

We are closed to the public but please follow us on social media as we are posting activities and images daily. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. 

The Land Walks project was written about by Manchán Magan and featured in The Irish Times magazine on April 4 2020, the Southern Star newspaper and the West Cork People. Land Walks Land Talks Land Marks exhibition was profiled by writer and curator Róisín Foley in May/June 2020 of Visual Artists Ireland News Sheet. https://issuu.com/visualartistsireland/docs/van_mj_2020__print_

https://www.southernstar.ie/news/walking-the-walk-talking-the-talk-4204362

Join us for a walkthrough of both galleries in the video below, filmed by Tomasz Madajczak.

Conceiving of land as 'a latent archive of silent histories' (Uriel Urlow, Theatrum Bontanicum), William Bock's Land Walks Land Talks Land Marks explores how the natural environment might become a space to unearth stories about identity, belonging and migration. An exhibition which encompasses three distinct yet interconnected parts, it comprises visual artworks, a public forum of conversations and engagements, and a series of sound walks produced by the artist in collaboration with asylum seekers and local residents.

Land Walks is a collaborative sound project that maps experiences of belonging and uprooting in the West Cork landscape. Over six months, William Bock walked with individuals living in Clonakilty Lodge Direct Provision Centre and local residents, recording their conversations as they walked. Together with the artist, composer Justin Grounds and artist Michael Holly, the group edited the recordings and created a soundscore for others to listen to while walking in the same locations. Since 2018, William also recorded walks with other West Cork residents, who share their own perspectives on Irish identity, migration and the land they now live on.

Land Talks is a month-long series of events- discussions, workshops and film screenings curated by William Bock that brings together artists and local communities to think creatively around the themes of the exhibition. It is a space to assemble, to listen to old stories and envision new ones. As anthropologist and writer Donna Haraway urges, we need to radically 'change the story' of our relationship to nature and to each other in this time of rapid social and ecological flux.

Land Marks is an audio-visual installation for Gallery II, informed by two years of research walking around West Cork. It includes field recordings, conversations and materials sourced during the walks. It creates a space for conversations and reflection, for discourse and contemplation. Through this assembly of field recordings, photography, painting, foraged plants and pigments, William Bock seeks to open a conversation about our complex, interconnected and troubled relationship with the natural environment, and speaks of the entangled stories of migrations and ecologies across the world.

Guest blog writer Stella Gilfert studied Fine Art at the Braunschweig University of Art, Germany and is currently completing a master's degree in art education. Stella is on Public Engagement Placement at Uillinn West Cork Arts Centre, now working remotely from Germany and has written this blog about William's exhibibition.

For more information see: www.landwalkslandtalkslandmarks.com

Land Walks Land Talks Land Marks - Programme of conversations and engagements

Saturday 29 February │ 2.00 pm
Opening Event
In Conversation - William Bock and Gabhann Dunne
Invasive Plant cocktails from Mick O’ Shea and Irene Murphy
Gabhann Dunne’s work reflects on issues of emigration, migration, absence and our changing climate. His exhibition Committed to Falling, which coincides with Land Walks Land Talks Land Marks at Uillinn, comprises over one hundred small oil paintings of migratory birds that are known to visit Ireland, accompanied by a new series of panels depicting extinct or non native but naturalised plant species found in West Cork.

Saturday 7 March │Time 7.00 pm
Launch Event of the Project with Clonakilty Lodge Direct Provision Centre at the Emmet Hotel, Clonakilty. All welcome

Wednesday 11 March │ 5.00 to 8.00 pm
Dreamin' Skibbereen (Part I)
Organised by Sustainable Skibbereen, this workshop with graphic designer and data harvester Orlagh O'Brien, invites participants to visualise future sustainable scenario(s) for Skibbereen. The workshop is experiential and will extrapolate lived experience. Booking is essential and places are limited.

Thursday 12 March │ 7.00 pm
Film screening of Pine Square by Michael Holly and Lauren Guillery, a short, experimental documentary about Sioned Jones, the Bantry resident who, over the last 14 years has quietly removed spruce trees in the plantation above her home and lovingly replaced the conifers with native broad leaf trees. Screening will be followed by a public discussion with a panel of experts, activists and artists on the theme of civil disobedience and eco-guerrilla activities in defence of biodiversity and nature.
Michael Holly is an artist and documentary filmmaker and works with video, sound, installation and photography in para-fictional and documentary investigations into local and national identities. He is a current Irish Research Council PhD scholar in Film and Screen Media at University College Cork.
Lauren Guillery, originally from the French Flanders and living in West Cork since 2015, is a rock musician, music producer, environmental activist, permaculture practitioner and craft-maker.

Saturday 14 March │ 12 noon
POSTPONED to Autumn 2020. In Conversation - Glenn Loughran and William Bock
Dr. Glenn Loughran is an artist and lecturer at TU Dublin. He is the Programme Chair of the BA Visual Art Degree programme on Sherkin Island. One of his current projects is What is an Island?, a multi-regional, artistic research project which explores relational form through the concept of archipelagic thinking and collaborative arts practice. Developed over diverse geographic sites from West Cork to Shetland to the Galápagos Islands, What is an Island? negotiates the shifting relations between locality and world at a time of planetary transition.

Saturday 21 March │ 12 noon
Facebook Live Broadcast: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=901503453617710
Conversation with Nature - Peter Tadd
in association with Cork Nature Network (West Cork)
Given the current situation and temporary closure of Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre, Peter has offered to do a live broadcast of his talk from William Bock's exhibition.
This is an online event only. The gallery will be closed. Please tune into Facebook at 12pm this Saturday to listen to the talk!
Peter Tadd has worked throughout the United States and internationally as a clairvoyant therapist, teacher, lecturer, consultant, and writer for over 40 years and is now based in West Cork.

Wednesday 25 March │ 5.00 to 8.00pm
Dreamin' Skibbereen (Part 2)
This second event is a structured, interactive response to the scenario(s) developed in the first session and is open to everyone who is interested in imagining a sustainable, viable, nature aligned and thriving Skibbereen. 

Saturday 28 March │ 12 noon
Land Walk, artist-led walk with William Bock and participants from the Project. Booking is essential as places are limited.

Tuesday 31 March │ 1.30 pm
Uillinn Artist in Residence, Pascal Ungerer presents Marginal Habitats, a discussion on his work and art practice which is primarily concerned with spatial cultures in the context of peripherality, contested space, social history and geo-politics. He has a particular interest in marginal habitats, which are hidden, obsolete or dysfunctional and he works across a wide range of media including photography, video, painting, sound, text and digital collage.

Thursday 2 April │ 7.00 pm
Uriel Orlow - Online Film Screening followed by Q&A via ZOOM
We are delighted to welcome artist Uriel Orlow who will present two of his short films on the Zoom platform as part of the Land Talks programme.
Fairest Heritage and Imbizo Ka Mafavuke (Mafavuke’s Tribunal) are films from Orlow's Theatrum Botanicum, a major body of work and ongoing research, which looks to the botanical world as a stage for politics at large through film, photography, installation and sound.
The screening will last for 35mins followed by a 20min Q&A with the artist. We look forward to seeing you there!
To participate please follow this link to our Zoom event. Join the Zoom meeting here: https://us04web.zoom.us/j/326393731
Remember you will need the Zoom app downloaded on your phone or computer before you begin. You can register and download the app here: https://zoom.us/ it only takes a minute!

Saturday 4 April │ 12 noon
An online multicultural lunch
We will be gathering for a virtual lunch and conversation on the Zoom platform with guests Vukašin Nedeljković, Zoë O Reilly, William Bock and individuals from Clonakilty Lodge Direct Provision, participants of Bock's Land Walks Project.
The conversation will be recorded on Zoom and broadcast on Land Talks Facebook and shared on Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre Facebook, later on Saturday.
Vukašin Nedeljković is an artist, PHD candidate at TU Dublin and creator of the Asylum Archive, an exhibition of accumulated artefacts, oral histories and photography relating to the Direct Provision system for housing asylum seekers in Ireland.
Zoë O Reilly is a researcher, writer, visual ethnographer and author of The In-Between Spaces of Asylum and Migration, published by Palgrave.

All events are free.

Land Walks: A Conversation on Identity, Belonging and the Irish Landscape

Land Walks is a collaborative sound and visual art project by artist William Bock and residents of West Cork, that maps experiences of belonging and uprooting in the West Cork landscape through walking, storytelling and collaborative field recording.
Over six months, William Bock walked with nine asylum seekers living in Clonakilty Lodge Direct Provision Centre and other local residents, recording their conversations as they walked in different locations around West Cork.
Together with William Bock, musician Justin Grounds and artist Michael Holly, the group edited the recordings and created a sound-score for others to listen to while walking in the same locations. These can be found at www.landwalkslandtalkslandmarks.com
A case study on the project can be viewed here
The periodical Create News 29 is based on a conversation between William Bock, Zoë O’Reilly, researcher and author of recent book The In-Between Spaces of Asylum and Migration; Vukašin Nedeljković, artist and creator of Asylum Archive; Donna Treya from West Cork Development Partnership; and project participants Lora Mildred, Mariama Bah and Khanyo Dlamini.
This project was funded by an Arts Council Artist in the Community Scheme Project Realisation Award managed by Create: National Development Agency for .Collaborative Arts and supported by Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre and West Cork Development Partnership.

 

WCAC acknowledges the financial support of the Arts Council and Cork County Council.

 

Images: William Bock, Migrant, image created in collaboration with participant of the  Land Walks project , digital photograph.
William Bock, Walk from Home 01, Digital Photograph