Unheard by Most
Doors slamming, alarms beeping, keys clanking….. doors slamming.
Unheard by most, yet our everyday soundtrack. This unique soundscape, crafted by students and their teacher at the Cork Prison Education Unit, captures the essence of life within the prison walls. Recorded inside the prison, the piece offers a glimpse into the daily auditory experience of the student. The students believe this soundscape provides an authentic insight into the distinctive sounds of prison life.
The general theme progressing through the textiles and ceramics component of the exhibition is based on our relationship with the sea. Ideas were nurtured by looking closely at Ernst Haeckel’s weird and wonderful world of creatures and his rendering of natural geometric structures. Working with Visual Thinking Strategies, the UCC Artists and The Sea series of lectures delivered by Dr James Cronin, the conversation delved into the world of Environmental Art and Climate Change.
The integration of ceramics and textiles was cultivated through a collective group project and is the consummation of a year’s parlance with artistic discourse.
This cell displays work by the Ceramic, Textile and Pyrography class in Cork prison. Each piece has been worked on by a number of students to promote a sense of community and collaboration through group work.
‘Artists and the Sea’
The creative expressions you experience in this exhibition are the fruits of learning through dialogue with students in Cork prison who participated in a short course, facilitated by University College Cork, entitled: “Artists and the Sea”. This six-week course explored the different ways in which artists chose to make use of the sea in their works.
The sea is used to evoke a full spectrum of human emotions: peace, optimism, adventure, fear and grief. Some depictions are hyper-real, while others simply suggest the flick of a brushstroke.
Artists often illustrate humanity’s use of the sea and what that represents; from the labours of fishing communities through to the vessels upon which journeys began, conflicts took place and lands were discovered or abandoned.
There is one theme, though, that appears universal; the sea’s vast and unknown nature means it will never be fully tamed or understood.
Dr James Cronin | Course facilitator
University College Cork
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‘Sceal Scaol’
As you enter the cell you are drawn to an embroidered life jacket decorated with text, drawings and textures. Inspired by a workshop facilitated by Max Porter as part of Sounds From A Safe Harbour and delivered to the women of the Dillons Cross Project, it unravels fragments from their life stories.
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‘The Home Project’
Advancing with narrative, the house embellished with pyrographic script exposes the subject of homelessness, displacement and destruction of the home. Inspired by various nationalities in the prison it brings together the universal meaning of home.
Florin Nolan, a visual artist born in Romania and adopted by Irish parents, is deeply connected to Cobh, Ireland, where his father served as a prison officer on Spike Island. His works, exhibited throughout Cork City and County, are enriched by diverse cultural influences.
Florin uses acrylic and ink to create dreamlike architectural visions of Cobh and other landmarks. His pieces explore personal identity, memories and everyday life, inviting viewers to rediscover familiar sights through his expressive interpretations.
Florin also sculpts colourful, joyful figures that reflect his journey from a Romanian orphanage to life in Ireland. These characters often appear in his paintings and weave his visual autobiography. This theme is echoed in the stop-motion film, Spotty The Ladybird, that Florin was supported in production.
Florin’s artistic journey began with pastel chalks and watercolours in childhood. He developed his practice through Suisha Arts’ Community Employment Scheme and now works as a freelance artist at The Orchards Studio Space at Cope Foundation. In addition to visual arts, Florin is a passionate performer and dancer, participating in Suisha Arts Theatre Collective and Inclusive Dance Cork.
He advocates for the rights of people with disabilities in arts and culture and stars in the Decision Support Service public information campaign, promoting the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015.
Location: Punishment Block, Spike Island
Date: 20 July–14 September 2024
Curated by Dorota Gubbins (Spike Island)
This exhibition is the result of a collaboration with Cope Foundation, Suisha Arts and Cork Prison.
Backwater Artists Group will present the work of four members Ciara Rodgers, Andrew Carroll, Anna Barden & Tina Whelan, as part of the Cork Harbour Festival 2024. The exhibition will explore maritime themes, the history of the Punishment Block and Fort Mitchel at Spike Island and the fort’s unique position in Cork Harbour through the mediums of drawing, performance, print and video. The opening event will include a performance by artist Ciara Rodgers, which will take the form of performative drawing actions engaging with the historical, physical and sensorial qualities of the building. The resultant drawings will be exhibited amongst the two spaces.
Find more information about the artists on their profiles. Follow the links below:
Andrew Carroll | Tina Whelan | Ciara Rodgers | Anna Barden
Cork Harbour Festival: 2 June – 7 July 2024
Cork Harbour Festival is the largest annual event in Cork Harbour offering a week-long celebration of Ireland’s maritime culture. The festival features over 80 different events – taking place in Cork City as well as in 15 harbour towns and villages.
Founded in 2015, the festival celebrates Cork Harbour as a natural and cultural resource, with the communities and their stories at the heart of it. Throughout festival week there is a huge variety of events to dive into, from water activities to guided walks, open days to open sails, seafood tasters to seaweed foraging and so much more.
Cork Harbour Festival attracts some 25,000 visitors from across Ireland and beyond.
Find more information about this year’s programme here.
At Spike Island, we are delighted to uphold our collaboration with Backwater Studio and contribute to this year’s involvement in the Cork Harbour Festival, celebrating Cork’s unique maritime heritage. Our venues feature exclusive art spaces housed within historic heritage buildings, boasting a storied history of nearly two centuries.
Led by Spike Island’s curator, Dorota Gubbins, our focus on heritage and the arts drives the coordination of diverse events.
Annually, Spike Island welcomes approximately 70,000 visitors from Ireland and around the globe.
Backwater Artists Group is an artist-led organisation, located on Wandesford Quay, in the heart of Cork City. Our mission is to support and advocate for visual artists, allowing them to thrive and to foster a deep appreciation and enthusiasm for the visual arts within the community and to keep sites of production at the heart of Cork city.
We are a key fixture in Cork’s cultural landscape and we sustain a thriving visual arts community. Since our inception in 1990, we have supported the practices of over 500 artists, including 150+ early career artists.
Exhibition Title: Deep Time
Artists: Andrew Carroll, Tina Whelan, Ciara Rodgers & Anna Barden
Dates: 2 June-7 July
Opening Event: 4 – 6pm, Sunday 2nd June
Location: Punishment Block, Spike Island
SCHOOLHOUSE ruins are a common sight in the Irish countryside. Within their collapsing walls, lessons were learned and friends were made. Belief systems, traditions and moral codes were imprinted on young minds.
SPIKE ISLAND NATIONAL SCHOOL—constructed from corrugated-iron, was not of the typical designs supplied by the Office of Public Works at this time, with corrugated-iron rarely if ever being used as a building material for schools. Given it’s atypical design it is quite likely that the OPW were not involved in the construction of the school. This may be due to the fact from 1938 to 1979, the Irish Army, especially the Artillery Corps, Coast Defence Artillery (C.D.A.), were garrisoned Spike Island, primarily to man the six-inch guns.
The building was a three-roomed school house, with classrooms divided by sliding screens.
Off a long, central corridor were cloakrooms and bathrooms. The building itself was located at the edge of an old quarry and sheltered to the south by the imposing military fortifications.
ENDA O’FLAHERTY’s work as an archaeologist has brought him to the most isolated parts of Ireland, where he noticed and grew ever more intrigued by these ever-present features of the landscape. He began actively seeking them out, photographing over 240 schools in total, researching their histories and interviewing those who attended them.
Speaking ahead of the launch of the exhibition, curator Dorota Gubbins said: “Each empty building has a story to tell, and gathered in this thoughtful collection, they whisper a poignant narrative of a disappearing Ireland – of changing needs, desires and ways of life.”
In 1917 thousands of American servicemen came to Ireland to participate in the First World War. The majority served in the U.S. Navy, located at bases around the country in Cork, Wexford, Dublin and Donegal. The bulk of them served in and around Cork Harbour, particularly in the vicinity of Queenstown/Cobh. Over the course of the next two years, many local Irish women met and married these sailors; St. Colman’s Cathedral in particular was the scene of a large number of ceremonies.
Who were these women, and what are their stories?
This exhibition is based on new research which has sought to identify some of these young women through an analysis of the passport applications they submitted when seeking to travel to America. Twenty of their passport portraits are presented here, together with what we have been able to uncover about their lives.
Portraits: Women of Cork and the U.S. Navy 1917—1919
New research by Damian Shiels
Mitchel Hall, Spike Island
29 September 2018—18 October 2019
Curated by Dorota Gubbins
Dr Damian Shiels
Archaeologist, Historian, Curator
“I specialise in bringing history and archaeology to public audiences. With over 20 years experience in heritage, I have worked across both the private and public sectors. Formerly a curator of the National Museum of Ireland, I have a particular expertise in public engagement, lecturing and writing. My specialist focus lies in conflict archaeology and the history of the Irish in America.”
Nexus is an exhibition that reflects connection, collaboration and partnerships formed by the Education Unit in Cork Prison (Cork ETB).
The Kaleidoscope of painting and print integrated with mosaic, pyrography and match-work create a narrative symbolizing the essence of incarceration. Ceramics and textiles are interwoven to illustrate and combine the practice of observational research alongside craftsmanship. Visual Thinking strategies are employed throughout to encourage investigation through the creative process in partnership with UCC.
Nexus is inspired by kinship in the Education Unit giving agency to every student regardless of experience. This exhibition has been curated to feature a broad scope of work born from individual practice but united in synergy and collective.
Since 2017, there has been a creative synergy between University College Cork and the Education Unit, Cork Prison, (Cork ETB) fostering visual thinking strategies to disrupt power imbalances by promoting a convivial learning environment in the art studios.
We set up our conversations about art by asking our students: What do you see? How is it made? What questions would you ask of the work? These questions promote a student-centered approach to learning. The studio artworks are student responses to these questions. You can see visual thinking strategies played out in the two totem installations based on close reading by the students of two paintings from the National Gallery of Ireland in this exhibition:
“A Convent Garden, Brittany” by William John Leech, c.1913 and “Woman Writing a Letter, with her Maid” by Johannes Vermeer, c.1670.
In “A Convent Garden, Brittany”, Leech’s painting reflects an interest in the religious devotion of the Breton community that Leech shared with many visiting artists. The students, in their response to Leech’s work, have specifically chosen to respond to the artist’s love of sunlight and floral patterns, culminating in the sculptural forms of the lilies as the termination of the totem.
In “Woman Writing a Letter, with her Maid” a maidservant stares out of a window, her mistress writes a letter. In the foreground of the original painting on the floor, lie a red seal, a stick of sealing wax and an object which is probably a letter-writing manual, often used for personal correspondence at the time. The students, in their response to Vermeer, have chosen to respond to colour and the pattern of the tiled floor as distilled from the original illusionistic painting. The work of visual thinking strategies, aimed at encouraging students to question how to see with intention by looking closely at a work of art in order to respond to its affect on them, is orientated towards promotion of freedom of creative expression by student-inmates who reflect on their experiences of incarceration as a stage on their journey out of crime.
James G. R. Cronin,
University College Cork
To find out more about the 2022 ‘Story’ exhibition, visit: https://www.spikeislandcork.ie/exhibition-story/
To mark the 85th anniversary of the 1938 handover of the ‘Treaty Ports’ from Britain to Ireland, Spike Island is hosting a new exhibition featuring a newly added collection of original artefacts which have been kindly donated to the museum by Fionnghuala Smith and her family. The collection features original documents, photographs and artefacts and will be displayed to the public for the very first time.
The collection tells the story of Daniel Cusack of Spike Island, a seaman who was employed by the [British] War Office. After the handover in 1938, Daniel was one of a small number of people who remained on the island after being offered employment by the Irish Department of Defence Fleet. One of the documents which is dated ’11th July 1938′, appears to be one of the first official documents signed by the Irish authority at Spike Island.
Another unique artefact donated to the curatorial staff at Spike Island in 2017 is a personal eyewitness account of the handover written just minutes after the ceremony. To commemorate the 85th anniversary this year, the Spike Island team have produced a special video based on the contents of this letter which gives visitors the opportunity to experience the excitement which surrounded Cobh and Cork Harbour on that momentous day.
The list of officers and enlisted men who arrived at Spike Island on 11 July 1938 is also on display courtesy of the Spike Island Volunteer Group.
The national flag, which is believed to be the actual Tricolour raised on the occasion of the 1938 Handover, is also exhibited. This original artefact was kindly donated to the museum by Mr Tom Kelly of Cobh in 2018.
Exhibition runs until 30 September 2023
Location: Mitchel Hall, Spike Island
The Taoiseach Éamon de Valera and other senior members of the Irish government at Spike Island.
Image courtesy: National Library of Ireland; kindly colourised by John Breslin, co-author of “Old Ireland in Colour” books.
