Main Street
Aughrim
Co. Wicklow
Ireland
Hours: Thursday–Sunday 10am–5pm
office@kunstverein.ie
Kunstverein Aughrim is accompanying three artists’ practices throughout 2023, supporting the distinct methodologies that underpin each of their artistic processes in the development of major new bodies of work.
Áine Mac Giolla Bhríde uses writing as a way of producing thought. For the artist, diaristic, observational texts, authored in specific locations, have the potential to collapse distance and enable the co-habitation of memory and thought. Situated Writing like this is a new development in Mac Giolla Bhríde’s largely sculptural practice. Kunstverein Aughrim is working with them to unravel the meaning and mechanics of reading and writing in and from a specific location, testing how the architectural reality of a site can inform an attitude, feeling or conviction through spatial presence, invited or not. Two upcoming solo exhibitions at the Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny (April) and Void Gallery, Derry (November) will frame Mac Giolla Bhríde’s practice and present their new work.
Deirdre O’Mahony works urgently to give voice to the invisible protagonists that shape our earth’s future. From casting a series of root systems into porcelain tableware, to enacting an adaptation of Antoine-Augustin Parmentier’s 18th century potato feast, O’Mahony is committed to uncovering and encouraging conversations about rural sustainability, food security, political ecologies and the future of farming. The groundwork for her major new film work The Quickening has been laid with the artist’s ongoing project The Sustainment Experiments, for which she planted crops (The Plot), shared sources (FEEDER), and hosted feasts (Eat Food Policy). An excerpt of the artist’s expansive practice, including research library, ceramic tableware and performance props, is currently on view at Kunstverein Aughrim.
Sonia Shiel’s paintings are dressed for angles, and sometimes throw shapes. In the studio, a low-tech haptic landscape is twisting towards the form of an infinite proscenium. Shiel’s mobius-like narrative recalls the ambiguity of our significance, where we are always already inside and always already outside of time’s great rhetorical unfolding. Kunstverein Aughrim is working with Shiel across the year to devise a series of ‘Pulse Events’ that productively agitate the final phase of this project’s development. These events invite perspectives from theatre directors, gaming developers, and writers, to activate research and accelerate plot development for a narrative text, a parenthesis video work, and the performative and navigational experience of the exhibition itself, which is set to open at VISUAL Carlow in September.
As part of Kunstverein Aughrim’s public programme, a series of seasonal previews serve to support the artistic process of testing and creating new work, bringing audiences as close to that creative process as possible.
Summer preview with Deirdre O’Mahony unfolds over the weekend of June 10 & 11, and includes a local foraging trail, topical lunch devised by an invited chef, a conversation reflecting on thirty years of artistic practice with the artist, a preview screening of work in progress, and the release of a limited edition of cast potato cups.
Autumn preview with Sonia Shiel takes place on the afternoon of Tuesday August 1, beginning with a staged forest walk. Framed by the Irish celebration of Lughnasa, a new ceremonial artwork will be activated by a weighted arrangement of collected harvest flowers. The day concludes with the launch of a new edition, and a series of readings on landscape by the artist, selected guests and invited ghosts.
Winter preview with Áine Mac Giolla Bhríde follows on from a series of Situated Writing workshops, and takes place on the evening of Thursday December 21. An exhibition of new work by the artist will be unveiled alongside an intimate artist talk, Solstice drinks, and the launch of a new edition.
Founded by Kate Strain, Kunstverein Aughrim is a curatorial production office located in South County Wicklow, Ireland. It part of the franchise established by Kunstverein in Amsterdam, with sisters in Milan, New York and Toronto. Subscribe to the Kunstverein Aughrim mailing list should you wish to receive irregular digital updates. Kunstverein Aughrim is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland.
