Vanessa Daws
Other Space – Underwater Explorations of the RMS Tayleur
Vanessa is a visual artist and open water swimmer based in Dublin. Vanessa’s art practice explores place through swimming. ‘Place’ being the watery space that is navigated and swam through, the littoral space surrounding and the social space created by this shared activity. Vanessa’s interest in Lambay Island started when she moved to Dublin and began swimming at Low Rock in Malahide where Lambay sits on the horizon. On September 6th 2016, Vanessa Daws became the first person to swim around Lambay, ‘The Lambay Circumnavigational Swim’ was the third swim in her project involving a series of swims to, about and around Lambay Island.
It was during her research for these swims that Vanessa heard the story about the RMS Tayleur, the pride of the White Star Line that while on its maiden voyage to Australia from Liverpool and during a stormy night in January 1854 hit rocks and sank off Lambay Island.
While on a UCD Art in Science Residency in 2015 an opportunity to learn to scuba dive with the UCD Sub Aqua club arose. Over the previous two years Vanessa was training to dive and finally managed to dive on the RMS Tayleur and film the ship in its current state in July 2017.
In 2017 Vanessa was a recipient of a Temple Bar Gallery Project Studio and was awarded a Docklands Small Grants Award, Vanessa was also commissioned to create new film work based on the Liffey as part of Port Perspectives ‘port | river | city.’ In 2015 Vanessa was selected for the UCD Art in Science Residency and was given the Neville Johnson Award as part of this residency. Vanessa was a recipient of the Artist in the Community Award from the Arts Council of Ireland and Create in 2013 and collaborated with the sea swimming community from Malahide, Co Dublin.
Catherine Barragry
Earthbound
Catherine Barragry is a Dublin-based artist who makes sculpture, performance and immersive events. Barragry studied sculpture at NCAD and went on to complete a Masters in event and performance based work in 2010. She was a resident of the Firestation Artist Studios from 2011 to 2014. Barragry has received support for her art practice from Dublin City Council and from the Arts Council of Ireland in the form of residencies and the Bursary Award. In her work Barragry often considers human survival and how revolutions of thought have altered our history. Barragry describes making art as a gesture of poetic politics.
Deirdre O’Mahony
Perishable Picnic
Research and art practice is grounded in collaborative engagements with different publics and communities. Her PhD, New Ecologies Between Rural Life and Visual Culture in the West of Ireland: History, Context, Position, and Art Practice revived a defunct rural post-office as a public space, X-PO, to reflect the complexity of dimensions – social, psychological, economic and natural – affecting place and landscape in the west of Ireland. Animated by a process of collaborative exhibition-making and the co-creation of artworks, X-PO made visible some of the invisible histories, unconscious projections and expectations underlying place-based attachments.
Subsequent research has reflected on the contemporary relevance of tacit, place-based knowledge, most recently The Village Plot at the Irish Museum of Modern Art for Grizedale Arts and she has just completed a project for Grasslands for Aarhus Capital of Culture 2017. She is currently working on a project funded by the Wellcome Trust for the Museum of English Rural Life, University of Reading and she will exhibit a new film commissioned by Callan Workhouse Union, The Persistent Return at Visual Carlow with the support of an Arts Council Project award. She has been awarded numerous national and international gallery and museum exhibitions, Arts Council of Ireland awards and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation international fellowship.
Alan James Burns
Entirely hollow aside from the dark
Alan James Burns is a Dublin based visual artist working in audio, video and performance. He holds a Masters in Visual Arts Practice from The Institute of Art, Design & Technology, Dun Laoghaire and a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art from Dublin Institute of Technology.
Selected exhibitions, video screenings and performances include Entirely hollow aside from the dark, Fingal Arts Public Art Commission, Portrane, Dublin, 2016; Those Who Swim (in) The Forest, MoKS, Estonia, 2015; MEx15 Symposium, Maynooth, 2015; SIX Degrees, Irish Museum of Modern Art, 2014; LUX13, Laban Center, London, 2014; He, solo exhibition, The LAB, Dublin, 2013; At the level of entity, The LAB, Dublin, 2013; Till The Cows Come Home, solo exhibition, Cavan County Museum, 2011; To walk in a state of finality than in one of impermanence, solo exhibition, Exchange Gallery, Dublin, 2010.
Burns has also undertaken a number of artist residencies, including Fire Station Artists’ Studios Residency, commencing 2017, Dublin Institute of Technology summer studio programme, 2016; RESORT Residency, Portrane, Dublin, 2016 & 2015; MoKS, Estonia, 2014; Irish Residential Studio Award, Red Stables, Dublin, 2012-2013; Cow House Studios, Wexford, 2011; and Cyland Media Arts Lab, National Centre for Contemporary Art, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2009. Awards and artist grants include the Arts Council of Ireland Touring and Dissemination of Work Scheme, 2017; Creative Ireland grants from Sligo County Council, Cavan County Council and Clare County Council, 2017; The Leonardo Programme, EU, 2014; Cavan Council Arts Act Grant, 2016, 2014, 2011 and 2009; and Fire Station Digital Media Residency Award, 2012.
Burns is on the board for the Irish moving image online resource MExIndex. He has lectured and taught at various colleges and schools and will present papers at the forthcoming international symposiums Sounds in Space, University of Derby 2017 and Sounding Out the Space: International Conference, Dublin School of Creative Arts DIT, 2017.