News archive

De-production
Lyónn Wolf

28 November 2025–25 January 2026

Flat Time House
210 Bellenden Road, London SE15 4BW

Opening Thursday 27 November 6–8pm

Exhibition open Thursday–Sunday 12–6pm
(Closed from 20 December–7 January)

flattimeho.org.uk

Flat Time House, London and Askeaton Contemporary Arts present the first UK solo exhibition of Lyónn Wolf, and a new commission initiated during an artist residency at FTHo in summer 2024. Wolf’s De-production creates an installation running through a succession of spaces in Flat Time House, dramatically transforming its interiors through sculptural and textual interventions. Playing upon the narrative and spatial tropes of popular Science Fiction, De-production has grown into an ongoing project for Wolf, tracing states of transition through what he describes as ‘an intentional re-patterning of reproductive logics’. Themes drawn from close readings of Ridley Scott’s Alien motion picture and subsequent sequels from 1979 to 1997 are a dominant aspect explored – monstrous motherhood, alienated embodiments and transitional states.

De-production begins with an undoing of the production and maintenance of gender within the nuclear family, and unfolds towards a trans and working-class poetics of time, labour and relationship. The artwork queries what it means to reproduce ourselves away from state apparatuses while also developing formats where this can become a shared and open project. In this context, Wolf is developing and maintaining an archive, The Breeding Room, which will have its first presentation as an archive at FTHo. It acts as counter to traditional institutional intentions and structures, whilst also documenting and sharing elements of a practice of gathering.

Lyónn Wolf is an artist and writer currently engaged with de-productive trans & class poetics. His work unfolds a desire for structures of being away from the logics of reproductive colonial time towards the collective reimagining of political futures centred on pleasure & interdependence for queer, trans & crip social bodies. Wolf nurtures communities of interest alongside the making of promiscuous works that engage forms recycling, thrift and ephemera to pose questions about value, accumulation, and authorship that, in his own words, ‘posits the imagination as a political tool with radical potential that can exist and erupt anywhere and at any time.’

The Irish Face
Frank Wasser

Friday 17 October 2025
Tate Library and Reading Room, Tate Britain, London

Open rehearsal and archival display: 1–3pm

Performance: 4.30–5.30pm

The Irish Face is a performance and one-day encounter with artist and writer Frank Wasser. Presented in the Library and Archive Reading Room at Tate Britain, The Irish Face is the public culmination of Wasser’s artist-in-residence at the site, a collaborative exchange supported by Tate and Ireland’s Askeaton Contemporary Arts during 2025.

Wasser’s research initially asks how national identity, and his own Irishness, has and continues to be mediated through systems of classification and categorisation, and what kinds of alternative evocations can still emerge. Drawing from narratives and subjects such as Derry-Londonderry’s famed Orchard Gallery, Tate Britain’s location on the former site of Millbank Prison – the world’s the first panopticon – or representations of Ireland as seen in Dublin’s National Gallery, Wasser creates a counter taxonomy of knowledge, speculating where potential blind spots might lie.

Presented as a gradually unfolding presence on 17 October, an open rehearsal and collection of artefacts and ephemera key to Wasser’s research are made available to the public during the afternoon. Acknowledging Wasser’s desire to ‘act and read out loud’ inside the typically silent spaces of the library and archive, he will gather to theatrically enact scripted writings, monologues and archival quotations that evoke entangled narratives of identity and institutional authority. In this way, Wasser considers how the spatial conventions of a library produce specific kinds of subjectivity in how, as individuals, we are shaped not only by what we read, but by where and how we read it.

Tate’s Library is a centre of excellence for art historical research, with holdings of more than half a million publications related to British art since 1500, and international art since 1900, including over 115,000 books and monographs, 175,000 recent and historic exhibition catalogues, over 10,000 artists’ books, zines and serials, 3,000 print and online journals, printed ephemera, press cuttings, audio and video recordings, as well as microfilm and microfiche collections.

Frank Wasser lives and works between Dublin, London and Vienna. Recent exhibitions include the solo show Plot-holes at the University of Oxford, where he earned his doctorate, and Debt, a group exhibition at the Salzburger Kunstverein. He teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London, and is editor of The Posthumanist journal. His writing has appeared in Frieze, Flash Art, Art Monthly, and ArtReview.

Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, Dublin
6pm Thursday 4 September

CLUI program director Aurora Tang will share recent curatorial and research projects from the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI), a non-profit research organisation interested in exploring and understanding contemporary landscape issues in the United States. A key inspiration for the work of Askeaton Contemporary Arts, CLUI was founded in 1994 and continues to be headquartered in Los Angeles. Over thirty years the organisation has been consistently producing and presenting exhibitions, publications, research resources, tours, lectures, and public programming – all about the built landscape of the USA as a reflection of its culture and economy.

Aurora Tang is a curator and researcher based in Los Angeles, California. She has worked with the Center for Land Use Interpretation since 2009, and currently serves as its program director. As an independent curator Tang has organized recent exhibitions at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture (West Hollywood, California), MOCA Tucson (Tucson, Arizona), and Armory Center for the Arts (Pasadena, California). Tang was managing director of High Desert Test Sites (Joshua Tree, California). She is recipient of an Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Curatorial Research Fellowship.

See more on CLUI at https://clui.org

Image credit: Aurora Tang, photo by Elon Schoenholz 

A new collection of Seanie Barron’s walking sticks are presented at Christian Berst Art Brut gallery in Paris from 6 September to 7 October. The exhibition is curated by Profane magazine on the occasion of their ten years of publication celebrating eclectic, unique and eccentric forms of creativity in France and elsewhere, with Seanie featuring prominently in its pages.

Seanie Barron carves and shapes wood in a workshop at the rear of his house in Askeaton. His walking sticks, made with basic handtools and an intuitive approach, are borne out of his understanding of nature and often-humorous interpretations of the environment around him. He roams down and around bohereens, undergrowth and ditches, all the time looking for the right branch in a field or underneath a bush to then shape into surreal forms referencing seahorses, weasels, dancers, extra-terrestrials, dolphins, foxes or swimmers.

See more here

Watch Michael Holly’s video on Seanie Barron here

Download the programme guide here.

Askeaton Contemporary Arts invites you to WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBOURHOOD, curated by Michele Horrigan.

Our annual artist residency programme and festival situates Irish and international artists in the midst of Askeaton each summer, discovering new potentials of creative energy, the making of place and innovative ecological thinking. 

From our community hall to the River Deel, castle ruins, streets and surrounding countryside, Welcome To The Neighbourhood looks to the rich layers of Askeaton’s daily life as its inspiration. Since 2006, artists from around the world have been at the centre of the community investigating, uncovering and creating new understandings of our locale. Many artworks made here have been presented elsewhere in Ireland and abroad in exhibitions, art biennials and film festivals, evoking Askeaton’s reputation since medieval times as a place of exchange, trade and cultural knowledge. 

This year, artists RODERICK BUCHANAN, NIAMH SCHMIDTKE and STUART WHIPPS, live and work in County Limerick throughout June 2025. A programme of events accompany their stay, FREE and OPEN TO ALL, culminating with a special celebration on Saturday 28 June featuring new artistic encounters throughout Askeaton.



FRIDAY 20 JUNE 8pm
ASKEATON COMMUNITY HALL
DEIRDRE O’MAHONY and NORA FOLEY

For three decades artist DEIRDRE O’MAHONY has made art about landscape and land use, most recently with a focus on farming. In her 2024 film The Quickening, she recorded farmers, scientists and agricultural policymakers, and transcribed their conversations into folk song for singers and musicians, accompanied by breathing animals and the movements of insect and creatures of the Irish earth, such as the dung beetle.

Beginning a new project exploring farming life and the volatile demands of the market, harvesting, and food regulation, she now centres her work around Askeaton. O’Mahony’s aim, to find a productive ground between local concerns and State and EU policies, is an ambitious one, where she intends to bring her discoveries to the European Parliament. Join for a screening of The Quickening and conversation with Askeaton farmer NORA FOLEY.



MONDAY 23 JUNE 10am
GATE OF ASKEATON CASTLE
DESMOND CASTLE WALKING TOUR

Dated to 1199, Askeaton Castle towers over everyday life in the town as a reminder of a medieval world that once existed here. Continuing Askeaton Contemporary Arts’ longstanding relationship with the site and its long-term restoration. Join stonemason and former site foreman John Moone for an informative tour of the castle and its expansive grounds, including The Hellfire Club, Constable Tower and Banqueting Hall. Booking essential, please call 087 3293678.



TUESDAY 24 JUNE 8PM
ASKEATON COMMUNITY HALL
AN EVENING OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERY

Archaeologists PAUL O’KEEFE and SEAN TIFFIN present a talk and a one-night-only display of artefacts found in and around West Limerick during recent excavations as part of the Foynes-to-Limerick Road Project. Since early 2024, a team of over seventy-five archaeologists have carried out excavations in advance of the road’s construction. Learn more about their working methods, the exciting unearthing of prehistoric stone axes and pottery, and news about impressive early medieval metalwork such as the stunning Ardshanbally broach-pin. AN EVENING OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERY is organised in association with Transport Infrastructure Ireland and Archaeological Management Solutions.



WEDNESDAY 25 JUNE 8PM
TOP OF THE TOWN
MICHAEL HOLLY’S ARDSHANBALLY

Artist MICHAEL HOLLY continues his ONLY IN ASKEATON series of films, found online at askeatonarts.com, finding new topics in the West Limerick landscape to investigate, and offering new viewpoints and ideas to how we live in an enriching land. This year, he focuses on the medieval Ardshanbally broach-pin, unearthed during excavation works for the new motorway underway. Probing the complex reasons for its construction – Adare’s affluent billions and Ryder Cup golf, and a new age of industrialisation – he muses on the intersecting politics of commerce, heritage and ecology that have made the broach reappear after a thousand years buried. Ardshanbally is realised in collaboration with TONY LOWES, writer, activist and founder of FRIENDS OF THE IRISH ENVIRONMENT. Join for a conversation with Michael Holly and the film’s debut at the Top of the Town function room.



THURSDAY 26 JUNE 8PM
BALLYSTEEN CARNEGIE LIBRARY
SÉAGH MAC SIÚRDÁIN

SÉAGH MAC SIÚRDÁIN, an independent advisor on environmental campaigns along the west coast, has for many years supported local communities to sustain and manage the natural resources of rivers and maritime areas, such as seaweed habitats. A regular visitor to Askeaton, he will speak about the challenges and hopes that lie ahead for the region, ranging from Askeaton’s large industrial complexes, our polluted Deel River, and the unparallelled yet threatened beauty of the Shannon Estuary. In conversation with curator Michele Horrigan, Séagh will speak of his experience and future prospects for community activism and local future ecologies we can generate through kinship with nature. The talk is organised in association with Askeaton Ballysteen Natural Heritage.



SATURDAY 28 JUNE 3PM
ASKEATON COMMUNITY HALL
OPEN DAY

Our annual OPEN DAY celebrates the work of 2025’s artists-in-residence. A reception at Askeaton Community Hall will be followed by a guided tour. From Glasgow, RODERICK BUCHANAN is an explorer of people, places, cultural identity and forgotten histories and the political implications of everyday life. For decades, around the world, he has opened up new understandings of how the everyday and the political are entwined. He recently organised a football game in Germany with three, not two teams, playing each other. Of dual Irish-Swedish identity, NIAMH SCHMIDKTE explores the political complications of ‘being green’, examining the relationship between listening and speaking, considering the kinds of voices that time, nature and humans could have with one another. Her recent writing includes a narrative between the fairies of Ireland and multinational corporations on the pros and cons of building wind farms on Draftia, an island off the west coast of Europe. STUART WHIPPS from Birmingham considers art as a way of learning from people and places, using curiosity to discover the world. He once restored a 1979 MINI car with the assistance of former factory workers, and made exhibitions in local museums to discover the idiosyncratic characters and stories held within public collections.



PUBLICATIONS

A variety of publications are available from ACA PUBLIC, our ongoing publication initiative. Exploring topics of environmentalism and art, and the many ways that culture and ecology intertwine to create new understandings of our contemporary world, please see our website for more details and information on upcoming releases.



FURTHER AFIELD

Askeaton Contemporary Arts partner with fellow cultural organisations to find innovative and resilient contexts for the artists we work with. SEANIE BARRON will hold a solo exhibition of sculpture and his renowned walking sticks at KINSALE ARTS WEEKEND in July. Throughout 2025 FRANK WASSER continues as Askeaton Contemporary Arts’ artist-in-residence at TATE LIBRARY AND ARCHIVE, and LYONN WOLF presents a solo exhibition at FLAT TIME HOUSE, both in London. BRYONY DUNNE continues as artist-in-residence at the IRISH ARCHITECTURAL ARCHIVE in Dublin culminating with a major exhibition in 2026.



ONLINE from THURSDAY 26 JUNE

Watch MICHAEL HOLLY’s Ardshanbally at Askeaton Contemporary Arts’ ONLY IN ASKEATON media channel.



ACCESS

Askeaton Community Hall and Ballysteen Carnegie Library are wheelchair accessible with dedicated wheelchair parking and accessible toilets. Askeaton Castle is on uneven ground – to further discuss access contact Askeaton Contemporary Arts. Top of the Town is wheelchair accessible with street parking.



EAT AND DRINK

Cagney’s Bar, East Square
Top of the Town, Main Street



ACCOMMODATION

Coolrahnee House
Reservations 061 398 883



VISITING ASKEATON

Car: 25 minutes from Limerick City on N69

Bus: Bus Éireann route 314 from Limerick City. Everyday with a regular service

Air: 40 minutes from Shannon Airport

As part of Deirdre O'Mahony's solo exhibition at VISUAL Centre of Contemporary Art in Carlow, opening on February 8, Askeaton Contemporary republish her seminal 2021 publication BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE. Made in and about the Burren, an area of outstanding natural beauty in the west of Ireland, O’Mahony’s paintings and video realised in the 1990s embody the complexities of this beguiling landscape. Encounters with environmental controversy, tourism, economic development, and an entrenched conservative visual ideology all encroach and impact on her artistic approach of the time.

Order here

Image: Deirdre O’Mahony, Traces of Origins, 1993 (detail)

Askeaton Contemporary Arts continues a growing relationship with Chicago this April, presenting a citywide series of exhibitions and public events. Bringing together artist-led activities between Ireland and the American Midwest, Askeaton Contemporary Arts acknowledge the welcome for Irish artists and curators from Chicago’s independent art spaces, upholding ambitious ingenuity and egalitarian attitude to the shaping and sharing of culture. Please join us to celebrate this initiative.

PROGRAMME LAUNCH
with Askeaton Contemporary Arts and Michele Horrigan
Ireland House, 401 North Michigan Avenue, Suite 1500

Artist talks, screenings with Michael Holly and bookstore


LILIANE PUTHOD
work wear blues
Curated by Michael Hill
Weatherproof, 3336 West Lawrence Avenue

Liliane Puthod’s work wear blues sees her work in the style of an ad-hoc archaeologist. She excavates and reveal stories embedded in everyday consumables, whether found, repurposed or fabricated. Combining industrial and crafted materials with traditional techniques such as stone carving, ceramic, wax modelling, and bronze casting, Puthod, in the words of curator Michael Hill, ‘draws attention to the value of labour and commodification in post-fordist times. Her practice moves between a range of production sites and workplaces whether it is a factory plant, mechanic’s garage, boutique store, or artist’s studio.’


AMANDA RICE
From Sunlight to Extinction
Curated by Noelle Collins
4th Ward Project Space, 5338 South Kimbark Avenue  

Noelle Collins notes, ‘Working predominantly in film, Amanda Rice combines observational documentary techniques and staged scenarios with modes of investigative storytelling. She is particularly interested in histories related to ecological or geological subject matter that extend to the politics of land use, mineralogy and resource extraction’. At 4th Ward Project Space, Rice presents No One Can Ever Embargo the Sun (2021) and The Flesh of Language (2023). Both explore power relations framed around ancient artifacts such as sun discs and extinct Irish Elk bones, to the modern detritus of the technological age. Rice will also show a new work-in-progress exploring Knock Iveagh, a hilltop site in Northern Ireland where ancient burial grounds and green energy solutions share the same terrain. 


ÁINE MAC GIOLLA BHRÍDE & DEVIN T. MAYS
Building A
Curated by Mark O’Gorman
Good Weather, 1524 South Western Ave

In Building A, curator Mark O’Gorman digresses on its creation, ‘Áine and Devin have considered the exhibition in terms of a ‘visit’ and how a visit to a place might influence the work presented there. Their visit has a specific destination – a room within Building A at the Midland Warehouses. This site has served as a physical space for both artists to respond by engaging with its architecture and materials housed within. Further material enquiries will spread through Chicago once both artists arrive in the city early April.’


Supported by Culture Ireland, Consulate General of Ireland, EXPO Chicago, Independent Curators International and The Complex, Dublin.

Image: The Irish House, Dublin

Askeaton Contemporary Arts’ Michele Horrigan curates the 22nd edition of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts, entitled The Salvage Agency, across multiple venues and locations in Galway from 1–17 November 2024. Established as the west of Ireland’s key annual showcase of contemporary art, TULCA continues to embrace Galway’s art institutions, cultural initiatives and public space together, presenting Irish and international artistic positions vital to our understanding of life today.

The 2024 programme will feature new commissions, artistic contributions and exhibitions that consider the role of art in contemporary ecology and environmental action. A series of public talks, screenings, performances and encounters feature, alongside a publication with texts by Michele Horrigan, novelist Walter Macken and contributing TULCA artists.

Galway, on the edge of the northeast Atlantic, is a unique location for a heightened awareness of what is at stake. Explorations of landscape, seascape and nature, public space, colonial history, political structures, the industrial complex and folk narratives are all pertinent. These are paths taken by our collective society in the shaping of today’s world and a contemporary Europe. From the wreckage, can art nourish a new reality?

See more here 

Image: Seanie Barron performing as An Poc Ar Buile, early 1970s

Micol Curatolo, Peter Fend, Becky Nahom, Paul O’Neill, Stephanie Smith in conversation
Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, Dublin
Thursday 14 November 2024

Askeaton Contemporary Arts invite key curatorial and artistic voices to discuss the urgent values of culture and ecology needed for critique and expression in contemporary life.
 
Peter Fend and Ocean Earth have for almost five decades proposed speculative and visionary ecological projects that rethink the relationships between art, power and the planet. Fend sees potential for radical change, and his ideas have often led him into friction with the representatives of government agencies, Big Oil and energy suppression. Curator, artist, writer and educator Paul O’Neill is a global voice on the possibilities and energies that exhibition-making and contemporary art practice can achieve – he shares his recent findings. Becky Nahom, in her role as director of exhibitions at New York’s Independent Curators International, has developed numerous experimental exhibitions that challenge art historical narratives across the globe. Stephanie Smith’s curatorial work in Chicago and elsewhere is acknowledged for commitments to groundbreaking ecological thinking through art. Micol Curatolo highlights her work around borders, belonging and identity in Finland.

Image: Micol Curatolo’s Here, Not. Dialogues on art and the making of here

Download the programme guide here.

Askeaton Contemporary Arts invites you to Welcome to the Neighbourhood, curated by MICHELE HORRIGAN. 

Our annual artist residency programme situates Irish and international artists in the midst of Askeaton life each summer, discovering new potentials of creative energy, the making of place and innovative ecological thinking. 

From our community hall to the River Deel, castle ruins, streets and surrounding countryside, Welcome To The Neighbourhood looks to the rich layers of Askeaton’s daily life as its inspiration. Since 2006, artists from around the world have been at the centre of the community investigating, uncovering and creating new understandings of our locale. Many artworks made here have been presented elsewhere in Ireland and abroad in exhibitions, art biennials and film festivals, evoking Askeaton’s reputation since medieval times as a place of exchange, trade and cultural knowledge. 

This year, artists SANTIAGO BORJA, JAN MCCULLOUGH and FRANK WASSER live and work in County Limerick throughout June 2024. A programme of events accompany their stay, Free and Open To All, culminating with a special celebration on Saturday 29 June featuring new artistic encounters throughout Askeaton.

In October 2023 our Men Who Eat Ringforts publication appeared inside Dail Eireann, during proceedings on the new Historic and Archaeological Heritage and Miscellaneous Provisions Bill. Deputy Aengus Ó Snodaigh noted,

‘I have gone back over Men Who Eat Ringforts… It is an absolutely fantastic book and an easy read. One would just pick it up and read it from cover to cover. It details how we have lost 30,000 monuments throughout our history… the book sets out what we have done in recent times and how our monuments have disappeared. We understand the purpose of this Bill is to try to give those protections so future generations can benefit from what we are doing here today... If people understood that, they might be making films like Guardians of the Galaxy about Ireland. We have so much history and mythology that we could make many such films.’

Congrats to Michael Holly, Sinead Mercier and Eddie Lenihan for so poetically elevating this discourse, and we are thrilled in Askeaton to have published their work.

Throughout April 2024, Askeaton Contemporary Arts present a series of events and encounters throughout Chicago.

At BARELY FAIR, an international invitational art fair with a novel approach – artists exhibit in 1:12 scale booths built to mimic the design of a standard art fair. Continuing our interest in placemaking and shared histories, and as part of a series of diorama-like sculptures made in recent years, Stephen Brandes presents The Chicago Inferno Travel Show (Mrs Leary’s Cow). With a balance of dark humour and poignance, his artwork remembers the story of Catherine Leary, an immigrant from Kerry to Chicago wrongly blamed for 1871’s Great Fire of Chicago. The flames, that supposedly originated inside her barn, destroyed the fastest growing city of the time, paving the way for the world’s first skyscrapers and many more modern innovations. Stephen’s artwork points to several concocted stories existing around the fire’s beginnings, each ultimately undermining the lives of new immigrant cultures from an urban middle-class establishment.

See BARELY FAIR

EXPO CHICAGO

Michele Horrigan presents the activities of Askeaton Contemporary Arts at the 2024 Curatorial Forum, a public conference held at EXPO CHICAGO from 11–13 April. Developed in partnership with Independent Curators International on the theme of Curating and the Commons, role of art in politics and public life, collective work, and collaborative dynamics are key topics to be explored at the Navy Pier venue. Alongside The Black School in New Orleans, Michele’s presentation addresses cultural programming in Askeaton, and the civic role that art can play in not only imagining, but actively creating a better future.

See more on the 2024 Curatorial Forum

Image: Stephen Brandes, The Chicago Inferno Travel Show (Mrs Leary’s Cow), 2024

In association with Expo Chicago and Independent Curators International, Askeaton Contemporary Arts position innovative curatorial practices from Ireland to a global audience in April 2024. Mark O’Gorman (The Complex, Dublin) and Helena Tobin (South Tipperary Arts Centre, Clonmel) partake in the Curatorial Exchange in Chicago, an invitation-only program dedicated and focused on fostering future collaborations for curators on a local, national, and international level. See more here.

Image: Helena Tobin and Mark O’Gorman

Seanie Barron, David Beattie, Jes Fernie, Michael Holly, Aino Lintunen, Amanda Rice, Elina Vainio

Opening 4 May 2024, 12–4.30pm

A day long public event with a book launch, artist talks, film screenings, presentations & book sales.

PUBLICS, Sturenkatu 37–41 4b, 00550 Helsinki
Exhibition open 12–5pm Wednesday–Friday until 31 May.

WITH ASKEATON CONTEMPORARY ARTS is the first event of a new series of curatorial collaborations organised by PUBLICS in Helsinki, coming together with another institution because of common or overlapping ideas, interests and concerns. Launching with a public programme on Saturday 4 May, we bring a cohort of artists associated with our ongoing programme to audiences and the artistic community in Helsinki.

Emphasising oral histories, little known folklore and explorations of urgent ecological research, Seanie Barron’s bespoke walking sticks, Jes Fernie’s uncovering of the ups and downs of being an artist working in Ireland, and David Beattie’s deep listening of ancient monuments feature. Michael Holly introduces his mapping of contemporary Irish landscapes and ecologies, presented beside Amanda Rice’s spiralling narratives of extraction abroad by the Irish diaspora. More exchanges of artistic experience and social encounter feature in Michele Horrigan and Sean Lynch’s continuing curatorial and publishing activities, researching Askeaton Contemporary Arts’ role and position in contemporary Irish and European society. PUBLICS invites Finnish artists Aino Lintunen and Elina Vainio to exhibit WITH ASKEATON CONTEMPORARY ARTS, joined by artist-curator Sakari Tervo, who runs the exhibition platform Pitted Dates, in conversation with PUBLICS director Paul O’Neill.

Supported by The Arts Council of Ireland and The Embassy of Ireland, Finland.

Thursday 15 February 2024
6.30pm
FormaHQ 

140 Great Dover Street 

London SE1 4GW

Friday 15 December 2023
6pm
Temple Bar Gallery + Studios
5–9 Temple Bar
Dublin D02 AC84

Forma London and Temple Bar Gallery + Studios host the UK and Irish launches of Jes Fernie’s new publication Things left undone unsaid uncelebrated unplanned unfinished. In discussions with editor Sean Lynch and curator Michael Hill, Jes’ research trips to Ireland in the last two years are recalled. She writes ‘This is a selection of mad, frayed, totally normal stories about undone, uncelebrated, abandoned things. They are spectacular, strange, problematic, hurtful, funny, ludicrous tales. They tell a bigger, messier story, rather than one that has been honed or finely crafted.’

Jes writes about how art gets made, what happens to it, and how world affairs, personal circumstances, and misfortune bump up against dreams and hard graft. Her aim is to recognise, and even celebrate, the vulnerability, the strangeness and the arbitrariness of artistic endeavour and much of life in general.

Designed by Daly & Lyon, and featuring Flemish-Irish artist Lily Van Oost, filmmaker Bob Quinn, the adventures of American artists Lawrence Weiner, Richard Serra and James Turrell in Ireland, sculptor Eilis O’Connell and writer Maeve Brennan, the publication is on sale here.

Image: Bob Quinn, The Family, 1979. Video still.

ACA PUBLIC has launched Men Who Eat Ringforts, a new publication with contributions from environmentalist Sinead Mercier, artist Michael Holly and folklorist Eddie Lenihan.

Ringforts are Ireland’s most common archaeological monument, liberally spread throughout the countryside. Seen as circular enclosures in the rural landscape and many existent for hundreds and thousands of years, they are often overgrown with trees and bushes, forming an unassuming yet encompassing presence. With increasing regularity, the Irish state has sanctioned the destruction of ringforts as part of motorway schemes and infrastructural development. Co-published with Gaining Ground, a public art programme in County Clare, read more about Men Who Eat Ringforts on our publications page. Now in a new reprint, read Manchán Magan’s feature article on Men Who Eat Ringforts in The Irish Times, here.

Michele Horrigan, Sean Lynch and Catalina Lozano feature in 2023’s Photography Bound. Reimagining Photobooks and Self-publishing. Initiated from a conference organised by Antonio Cataldo and Adrià Julià at the Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design at the University of Bergen and Fotogalleriet, Oslo, contributors disclose unique relationships to photobooks and publishing, as a trigger for social, political and cultural demands.

Askeaton Contemporary Arts invites you to 2023’s Welcome to the Neighbourhood.

Since 2006, our artist residency programme situates Irish and international artists in the midst of Askeaton life each summer, alongside thematic exhibitions, publications and events that further the potential for artistic energy, the making of place and innovative ecological thinking. Artists work in public places typical of an Irish town – from our community hall to the River Deel, petrol stations, castle ruins and streets – this form of engagement intends to bring forward the rich layers of Askeaton’s daily life. As a form of critique, investigation and celebration, artists are at the centre of active dialogues playing a primary and fundamental role.

This year, artists Bryony Dunne, Chris Kallmyer and Robin Price live and work in County Limerick throughout June 2023. A programme of events accompany their stay, FREE AND OPEN TO ALL, culminating with a special celebration on Saturday 24 June featuring new artistic encounters throughout Askeaton.

Download our programme brochure

Saturday 22 April from 2.30pm
Askeaton Community Hall

During an extensive journey undertaken in 2022 the waterways of Ireland, Anne Cleary and Denis Connolly’s Eco Showboat navigated Ireland’s inland waterways, meeting artists, scientists and communities along the way to together explore the urgent issues and unbridled potential of freshwater environments.

In 2023 they are undertaking a new zero carbon journey – beginning in Askeaton on the Shannon’s Atlantic estuary, all the way to Howth Harbour on the Irish Sea – upon the Mayfly, a unique solar-powered vessel. In partnership with Askeaton Ballysteen Natural Heritage and Askeaton Contemporary Arts, an afternoon of events to mark this special occasion will occur at Askeaton Community Hall with guest speakers, demonstrations and discussion about the issues facing County Limerick.

Thursday 13 April 2023
7–9pm
Camden Arts Centre, London

Camden Art Centre and Askeaton Contemporary Arts present a conversation event and launch of artist Adam Chodzko’s new publication Ah, look, you can still just about see his little legs sticking out from it all!

Emerging from a lifelong relationship with Pieter Bruegel’s sixteenth-century painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, Chodzko’s extensive new writing weaves a path through a vast ocean of associative thought. In conversation with publisher and artist Michele Horrigan, Chodzko will describe the many ideas, methods and patterns of thought he holds close.

Designed by Daly & Lyon and published by ACA PUBLIC, Ah, look… is for sale at a discounted price of £10 on the evening.

Thursday 2 March
Irish Architectural Archive, 45 Merrion Square, Dublin
4pm

Join Julie Morrissy, Gareth Bell-Jones and Adrian Duncan in conversation at the Irish Architectural Archive, Dublin, reflecting on the role of artistic practice in archives, especially those that challenge and overturn conventional understandings of history, place and culture.

Inside Out Archive explores the journeys and working methods developed by each speaker, while also celebrating the culmination of Duncan’s yearlong artist-in-residence scheme between the IAA and Askeaton Contemporary Arts, Limerick. Beginning at the IAA’s extensive reading room, the event will subsequently tour Duncan’s exhibition Little Republics – Preparations and Elements seen throughout the archive’s ground floor and courtyard, exploring the cultural impact of the housing phenomenon Bungalow Bliss.

Julie Morrissy was the first Poet-in-Residence at the National Library of Ireland from 2021–22. Her artworks have additionally been exhibited at the TULCA Festival of Visual Arts in Galway and currently at Project Arts Centre, Dublin. She is a recipient of the MAKE Theatre Award, and the Arts Council ‘Next Generation’ Award.

Gareth Bell-Jones is the director and curator of Flat Time House (FTHo), a gallery, education space and archive in the former South London home of post-war conceptual artist John Latham. At FTHo Bell-Jones develops the exhibition programme, residencies, alternative learning platforms and manages the library and archive resources. He is the chief editor of NOIT, a journal exploring John Latham’s art and ideas.

Working as an artist, filmmaker and writer, Little Republics: Preparations and Elements marks Adrian Duncan’s first solo exhibition in Ireland for over a decade. His third novel, The Geometer Lobachevsky, was co-published in 2022 with The Lilliput Press and Tuskar Rock Press, while his short film Prosinečki received its World Premiere at International Film Festival Rotterdam in early 2023.

The Pilgrim is a pilot exchange programme linking Barcelona with southwest Ireland, Latitudes with the organisation Askeaton Contemporary Arts, and Irish artists Ruth Clinton & Niamh Moriarty with Catalan artist Eulàlia Rovira. Throughout 2023, artist residencies and a public programme will enhance new artistic and curatorial research, and create new possibilities for international collaboration.

The Pilgrim’s curatorial framework derives from an extraordinary story from over two centuries ago. It is recalled that a Barcelona merchant named Don Martínez de Mendoza, one of the wealthiest men in Catalonia during the mid-1700s, murdered his son-in-law to avenge the death of his daughter in childbirth in a Barcelona convent years before. Don Martínez ended up living his last sixteen years as a pilgrim in penance in Askeaton. A cryptic inscription can still be found in the cloister of Askeaton Friary: ‘Beneath lies the Pilgrim’s Body, who died January 17, 1784’.

Latitudes learned about the existence of this local legend when visiting Askeaton in 2018 and were captivated by understanding how its details might match the historical reality in Barcelona. The tale points to little-known histories of cultural connections, and emotional ties between two distinct places of very different scales. The project will develop in an open-ended way through a shared approach to research and practice, storytelling and performativity, and an understanding of the existing dynamics of place. What can twenty-first-century curators and artists learn from each other, as well as from the navigators, pirates and economies that once linked Spain with Ireland during the last centuries? How can we (re)discover the role that place twinning has historically played in civic and cultural life?

Images: Eulàlia Rovira, Niamh Moriarty (photo Cian Flynn), Ruth Clinton (photo Colm Keating)

Continuing his ever-expanding explorations of design in Askeaton, Wayne Daly’s Askeaton Colourway 1 appears in the pages of the ABC News, Askeaton and Ballysteen Community’s annual parish publication.

Daly digresses, ‘You search for the term “Askeaton”. You are presented with a series of images. Fields. Shopfronts. The ruins of an abbey and a castle. A river. As you continue to gaze at these scenes, each image consolidates into a composite colour and is assigned a Hex code. You select the first twenty and organise them into a striation of horizontal bands. The colours blur and form a vertical gradient. A liminal landscape emerges, one possible account of this place’s history and materiality.’

Opening: Thursday 12 January, 6–8pm
13 January–3 March 2023. Tuesday–Friday, 10am–5pm
Irish Architectural Archive, 45 Merrion Square, Dublin

The Irish Architectural Archive and Askeaton Contemporary Arts are pleased to announce Little Republics – Preparations and Elements, a solo exhibition by Adrian Duncan.

Spread throughout the ground floor galleries and exterior courtyard of the IAA’s Merrion Square building, this extensive presentation of artworks is the culmination of a year-long artist residency scheme situating the artist between Dublin and Askeaton. During this time, Duncan has researched and developed a new series of sculptures, displays and printed matter, each related to the cultural impact of the housing phenomenon Bungalow Bliss.

First appearing in 1971 as a self-published catalogue of affordable house designs, Bungalow Bliss was initially drafted and distributed out of a car by Jack and Anne Fitzsimons to newsagents, petrol stations and bookshops. Over the course of the next thirty years, the Fitzsimons sold over a quarter of a million copies throughout Ireland. It resulted in tens of thousands of new dwellings appearing in Irish towns and surrounding countryside. In his appraisal, Duncan looks at what these houses are, why they look the way they do, and why they were so popular with the inhabitants of rural Ireland yet aggressively dismissed by many in the architecture profession. This legacy has radically transformed the Irish landscape and its history of dwelling, and Duncan asks what meaning and value bungalows have in today’s society.

Sculptures derived from the physical dimensions of a bungalow subtly yet repeatingly intervene throughout the Georgian grandeur of the IAA’s Merrion Square building and exterior courtyard, including a collaboration by Duncan and textile designer Olga Tiernan. Duncan’s expansive research is further featured in his book Little Republics: The Story of Bungalow Bliss, published in late 2022 by Lilliput Press to accompany the exhibition.

All at Askeaton Contemporary Arts are thrilled to present 2022’s Welcome to the Neighbourhood. We welcomed artists Chloe Brenan, Laurie Robins and Adrian Duncan to live and work in Askeaton, and presented a comprehensive public programme of events in conjunction with their stay.

Download the full programme, and see more at our archive page here.

ACA curator Michele Horrigan joins in discussion with Alessio Antoniolli (Gasworks, London) Fernanda Brenner (Pivô, Sao Paulo) and Catalina Lozano (Kadist Art Foundation) at ARCO, Madrid on 24 February 2022, 1pm CET.

At the 66th Cork International Film Festival, an ambitious programme with 17 days of film, 80 Irish and international features and documentaries and over 130 shorts enthralled audiences in November 2021.

The Audience Award for a short film was presented to Seanie Barron: Only in Askeaton from director Michael Holly. The short film tells the story of Seanie Barron, who has been making walking sticks in a workshop at the back of his house in Askeaton for decades. ‘I would like to say a huge thank you to Michele Horrigan and Sean Lynch of Askeaton Contemporary Arts who commissioned and produced this short film as part of a series named Only in Askeaton about artists and creatives who have been a part of their annual artists residency programme. Also a huge thank you to the legend that is Seanie Barron, and the wonderful audience of the Cork International Film Festival’, said Michael Holly. Holly’s film now goes onto the longlist for the 94th Academy Awards.

Tina O’Connell & Neal White’s 2017 Study for a Pavilion: Askeaton features in Jes Fernie’s Archive of Destruction, a story-telling website that brings together narratives around destruction and public art. Jes describes the archive as ‘made up of suspect categories, barely believable tales, and life-affirming strangeness. Spanning a hundred years and many continents, it tells cumulative stories of vulnerability, interference, rage, fear, boredom and love’.

See more here

Askeaton-based filmmakers Juana Robles and Michael Higgins are currently working on a new film set in and around Askeaton. A key element is their collaboration with Johnie Kavanagh and Ritchie Kane, two of the most experienced and well-known clowns of Ireland. During a two day performance workshop involving character building, improvisation and script development, the clowns also publicly performed in Askeaton. Their act, ‘The Power of the Mind’, saw them achieve astounding feats of dexterity and mind-bending magic, while also finding time to restore personal dignity and juggle whilst blindfolded.

Presented at Project Art Centre in Dublin until October 30, Emma Wolf-Haugh’s exhibition project Domestic Optimism considers the continually expanding legacy of the architect and designer, Eileen Gray. In video, sculpture and publication forms, Wolf-Haugh proposes a de-colonial, queer-working-class reading of Gray’s architecture, furniture, and modernist aesthetics, with a specific focus on the often sidelined and ignored queerness inherent in Gray’s life and work. Many elements of this expansive exhibition were developed during residency in Askeaton in 2020.