Category: Exhibition

Echoes of Isolation is a solo art exhibition by Sinéad Barrett which draws attention to the historical context of isolation on Spike Island, while also inviting reflection on the broader implications of isolation in contemporary society. The impact of isolation and displacement has become all too relevant, particularly in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic and the ways in which it disrupted our lives and our sense of connection to others…
During the 1800s, Spike Island was used as a convict depot and prison. Many of the prisoners were subjected to solitary confinement and it is estimated that almost 1,200 convicts died on the island.

This exhibition shines a light on these forgotten voices, exploring the emotional and psychological impact of isolation. Speaking ahead of the launch of the exhibition, Sinéad said: “For the last six months, I have been doing a residency on Spike Island which has been hugely rewarding as well as educational and informative. I have loved spending time on the island wandering through the buildings and the different histories of the Fort and the island. For my residency, I concentrated on the 36 years from 1847-1883 when Spike Island was a convict depot and prison. This residency will culminate in a solo exhibition Echoes of Isolation”.

Exhibition runs from 2 June—31 August
Location: Punishment Block, Spike Island

Part of Cork Harbour Festival

Curated by Dorota Gubbins (Spike Island)

 

 

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Sinéad Barrett

Sinéad Barrett is a Cork-based visual artist and Programme Coordinator with Sample-Studios. She divides her time between Cork and West Cork, painting from her surroundings environment. In 2014 she returned to education to study Fine Art, graduating from Crawford College of Art and Design in 2019. She was awarded the CIT Presidents Prize for outstanding studentship and she also received a Crawford College of Art and Design Graduate Residency and was awarded the Sample Studios Graduate Curatorial Residency Award 2019/2020. She is very active in her own artistic practice, having secured numerous exhibition opportunities since graduating and received an Arts Council Visual Arts Bursary in 2021. Her work is held in both public and private collections.

@sineadbarrettart

 

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Sample-Studios

is an artist-led studio group based in Churchfield, Cork City that supports the professional development of contemporary arts practitioners in Cork City and beyond.

What began as a volunteer-led initiative in 2011 has grown into a professional arts organisation that manages artist studios and shared facilities in Churchfield, the city-wide TACTIC Visual Arts Programme, the Lord Mayor’s Pavilion exhibition and project space, and a successful graduate Residency Programme.

Sample-Studios is proudly supported by The Arts Council of Ireland, Cork City Council and The Community Foundation of Ireland.

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Sinéad Barrett

is a Cork-based visual artist and Programme Coordinator with Sample-Studios. She divides her time between Cork and West Cork, painting from her surroundings environment. In 2014 she returned to education to study Fine Art, graduating from Crawford College of Art and Design in 2019. She was awarded the CIT Presidents Prize for outstanding studentship and she also received a Crawford College of Art and Design Graduate Residency and was awarded the Sample Studios Graduate Curatorial Residency Award 2019/2020. She is very active in her own artistic practice, having secured numerous exhibition opportunities since graduating and received an Arts Council Visual Arts Bursary in 2021. Her work is held in both public and private collections.

@sineadbarrettart

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Deirdre Breen

is a multidisciplinary designer and visual artist who recently obtained her MA in Art & Process in CCAD. A  graphic design graduate from Limerick School of Art & Design she spent four years in London working as a multi-disciplinary designer, returning to Ireland in 2013 and is working as a graphic designer. Her artworks comprise screenprints, textiles and site-specific mural installations and she has a strong interest in collaborative practice. Her work is an exploration of shape and form through adventures in colour, geometry, gradation and repetition. Her work has been acquired by The Office of Public Works, Ireland, the Glucksman, UCC, Cork, and a number of private collections.
@deirdrebreen

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Padraic Barrett

 is an Irish visual and performance artist born in Kerry and now living and working in Cork. Barrett graduated from CCAD with a BA in 2019 and an MA in Art & Process in 2021. His works is  primarily responsive to the imperceptible forces of surveillance capitalism and its role in the gradual deterioration of the human condition. Working and merging with performance, film and installation he focuses on the impact of a bewildering and constantly changing political theatre.  He is a member of Sample-Studios and his Recent exhibitions include Confluence, The Lavit Gallery, Cork. https://www.padraicbarrett.com   

@padraicbarrettstudio

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Aoife Claffey 

is a visual artist, living and working in Cork City. Her work explores human sensory perception in provisional spaces and creates installations combining film, printmaking and sound. She recently qualified with an MA in Art & Process from CCAD She is a member of the Sample-Studios and Cork Printmakers. Her work is in the collection of Eli Lilly and has been featured in Bloomers Magazine #07: Emerging Female Artists. https://www.aoifeclaffeyart.com 

 

@aofieclaffeyart

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Kate McElroy

is a multidisciplinary artist currently based in Cork City. She is currently in residence in Uillinn  exploring ‘The Process of Unravelling’  having recently completed her MA in Art & Process from CCAD  having completed her BA  and  Higher Diploma in Limerick school of Art and Design. She is a member of Sample-Studios and previously was a member of A4 sounds studios.  She received a travel and training award for a residence in Lasanna, Nepal  in 2017 and was selected for an interactive international project ‘Building Bridges’ (2017-2019) which toured Delhi, Kolkotta and Bangalore, India and Yangnon, Myanmar.  https://www.katemcelroy.com/

 

@kate_mcelroy_

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Building upon a successful residency model for the exhibition Oiléan in 2021, Spike Island and Sample-Studios have further developed their collaboration for 2022/2023.
Spike Island is thrilled to host a residency for Éanna Heavey. The Sample-Studios member aims to develop a body of work that will allow for the realisation of his emerging art practice, both conceptually and in terms of the multidisciplinary nature of Éanna’s artistic work. 

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“I’m an emerging, Cork-based, multi-disciplinary artist who graduated in 2018 and has shown my work locally and nationally since graduating. I had my first solo show in July 2022 with Cork Film Centre and Chapel Hill School of Art in Macroom and received the Agility Award from the Arts Council in 2021.
My practice primarily includes experimental film, analogue photography, performance and mixed media drawing and painting. The themes and interests of my work lie in exploring the male psyche; the inherent tensions and vulnerabilities of manhood from a queer, psychoanalytical perspective on male gender identity.
Concerned by ongoing high statistics in male suicide and interested in the high rates in other areas such as homelessness, addiction, and prison violence ratios, I aim to explore the psycho-social influences that may be contributing factors to these high statistics.
This will be done in a sensitive, yet avant-garde manner”. 

 

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The work developed on Spike Island as part of this residency will culminate in an exhibition in The Lord Mayor’s Pavilion in October 2023.

 

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2021 marks the centenary of the use of the fort on Spike Island as a British-military-run prison for Republican prisoners and internees. Between February and November 1921 almost 1200 Republicans were imprisoned on Spike Island. This exhibition is the result of over a decade of extensive research undertaken by the heritage team on Spike Island.

‘IMPRISONING A NATION’ features among others original letters, newspaper clippings, hand-written correspondence between the prisoners and internees and their family members as well as official documents issued by the British forces in 1921. Approximately one hundred and forty photographs were collected over a period of ten years. The autograph books containing signatures of those imprisoned on Spike Island during 1921 are especially remarkable.

All these distinctive artefacts reflect the struggle for Irish Independence and depict a unique link between the prisoners and Spike Island. We on Spike Island are proud and excited to bring this fascinating part of the island’s past and important chapter in Irish history to life and to be able to share it with you, our visitors.

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‘Story’ is an exhibition reflecting on memory and circumstance. Each Artwork features a personal narrative reminiscing on anecdotes and memoirs. The work extends from the ghostlike anonymity of portraits symbolizing invisibility and absence of identity, to the haunting inner monologue caught in a cycle of repetition and the effort to untangle.
The Artworks depict intimate accounts from one seminal event, consumed with rebellion that influenced a lifetime of crime, to the childhood memories that form a conduit for escapism channelling the imagination into a brighter world. ‘Story’ is a selection of work curated by the Education Unit in Cork Prison designed to give agency to the student’s narrative through memory and reflection.
These are their stories……

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My paintings are stories about memories and places I grew up around as a child. I still fish there when I get a chance, nothing much has changed only that it is all overgrown now. I love going to those places because it takes me away from the city and into Nature, I feel relaxed and at peace when I am there. All my Paintings are from memory, they tell stories about my childhood and my visits as an adult. When I’m painting, I can imagine things that I would like to see there. I often use bright colours to enhance the mood of the picture as they are my expression of the natural world.

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Spike Island was home to hundreds of prisoners in the 1980s, most of whom were incarcerated for stealing cars and generating the joyriding epidemic in Cork and Dublin. My peers, the youth at the time, were inspired by stories of gangsterism and one crimelord in particular ‘The General’, who ridiculed and taunted the authorities any chance he got. The housing of groups of young fellas from socially deprived areas with blatant disregard for law and order was a recipe for disaster. We did not really comprehend the significance of our actions or the extent of damage that we would ultimately cause. That period of my life and that incident in particular would prove to have a detrimental effect on achieving any normal life. For a long time I would only understand and partake in rebellious behaviour, vandalism and a life in crime. So, I spent many years in Prison. My pots express my experience of the riots on Spike and are my stories of rebellion, violence, vandalism and total anarchy.
Luckily, no one died.

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LISTOWEL WRITERS IN PRISON
Category: POETRY: GETTING STARTED
Result: 1st Place
The Listowel Writers in Prison Competition is an eagerly anticipated event on the Education Unit calendar every year. Having previously achieved second place in the Short Story category in 2020 this student attended the Creative Writing class in the Education Unit and began his journey into poetry writing. A natural writer with great aptitude he produced three pieces and achieved 1st place this year with his Sestina “Untangling”.

 

“Untangling”

My mind is swirling
Contemplating the repeating.
The day is all the same.
It is ultimately mind numbing.
Hour by hour constantly continuing
to try and find differences.

Are there any differences?
So I now sit here swirling.
All the time continuing
at all of the repeating.
The relentless constant numbing
Why are the days the same?

How is it they’re the same?
And that there are no differences
Trying to release this numbing
Untangle this swirling
To iron out this repeating
that keeps on continuing.

Thinking always continuing.
Thoughts the same.
Thinking about the repeating.
Working out the differences.
Still there is swirling
and uncontrollable numbing

What is the numbing?
Is it continuing?
The untangling of the swirling.
It is in fact not the same
that there are some differences.
Is it really? Repeating.

No! There is no repeating.

Getting feeling where there was numbing.
Finding in the day, there are some differences.

Realizing in my continuing,
that nothing is the same
and now I’ve stopped swirling.

From my swirling, that it’s not the repeating
or it being the same that causes the numbing
but the continuing and finding of differences.

by: PH

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This stained-glass window was produced in the Education Unit in Cork Prison with the support of The Arts Council and the Visual Artists in Prisons Scheme. It was facilitated by the artist in residence Debbie Dawson in 2018.
Education is collaboratively delivered in Irish Prisons through the Irish Prison Service and the Education and Training Boards. There has been an ongoing association between the Education Unit and Spike Island for many years.
The Education Unit Cork Prison has been exhibiting on Spike Island on an annual basis since 2012. Some of our students in Cork Prison who worked on this panel had been incarcerated on the island.
The Education Unit presented this artwork to Spike in 2018 to commemorate this continuing partnership. This stained-glass window is currently on permanent display in one of the 1990s prison cells on Spike Island.

To find out more about the Education Unit Cork Prison visit:
https://www.corketb.ie/about-cork-etb/further-education-training-f-e-t/education-service-cork-prison/
https://www.tg4.ie/en/player/play/?pid=6310075341112&title=Nuacht%20TG4&series=Nuacht%20TG4&genre=Cursai%20Reatha&pcode=627182

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When museums, galleries, and cultural institutions were forced to close abruptly in March 2020, many art events had to be cancelled. The pandemic has not been easy for anyone and the art and culture sector has suffered considerably. Therefore, Spike Island was delighted to host an art exhibition ‘Modern Captivity’ by Maria O’Sullivan in August 2020.

‘Modern Captivity’ refers to the various forms captivity can take; both physical and psychological. The feeling of entrapment threads throughout the artwork, often using a constant transformation as a narrative to reference the imposing nature of modern society and its isolating effect. Social isolation is more present nowadays than ever before and can have significant consequences for people and communities across the globe.

Each composition shows structures and scenes shifting into something new. Irregular textures and strokes are used to build detailed representations of the increasingly abstract and restless world we inhabit. A large part of what determines the direction of Maria’s work is the artist’s intuition. Focusing on solitude, introspection and the nostalgic exploration of time and place, Maria often uses a variety of techniques and mixed media to examine the history of architecture and the transformation of space over time.

‘Modern Captivity’ is Maria’s first solo exhibition.

Maria O’ Sullivan was born in Cobh, Co Cork Ireland in 1990. She graduated with an Honours degree in Fine Art from Crawford College of Art and Design in June 2014.

From the Degree Show she was selected to exhibit in several group exhibitions, including the annual Fledglings exhibition in the Lavit Gallery Cork, The Joan Clancy Gallery in Dungarvan, and the Emerging Artists Exhibition in St. Patrick’s Hospital, Dublin.

Maria was also awarded a three-month residency with Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice where she spent time developing her practice. In 2015 her work was represented by the Doorway Gallery in Dublin and the Agora Gallery in Chelsea, NYC where she first exhibited her Urban Series.

Since 2018, her artwork has been exhibited in the Doorway Gallery Dublin, Cork Airport, and the Half Light Gallery in Middleton. She has also worked with St. Aloysius School in Cork to create a body of work for the ‘Future Forms’ Exhibition in the Glucksman Gallery, UCC, March 2019.

Maria’s work is collected both nationally and internationally.

www.mariaosullivanart.com

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The Trial is a multi-screen visual art installation on the history of healthcare and human rights in the Irish criminal justice system. Created by visual artist Sinead McCann, made in collaboration with men from the Bridge Project, Dublin, who have lived prison experiences, and draws from historical research by UCD historians Catherine Cox and Fiachra Byrne. It is part of a larger Wellcome Trust funded research project ‘Prisoners, Medical Care and Entitlement to Health in England and Ireland, 1850-2000’.

For twenty-two minutes, three characters–Tommy, Charlie and Neilí–tell real-life stories of those who were held or worked in Irish penal institutions during the 19th and 20th centuries. The thematic focus is on experiences of solitary confinement, dealing with separation from family when in prison, mental and physical wellbeing in prison and childhood experiences of detention in St Patrick’s Institution, Dublin.

The making of The Trial involved the design of a creative process that enabled the men from the Bridge Project to engage with UCD academic research on healthcare in prison, past and present.  The script for The Trial was developed through a series of creative workshops using carefully selected historic research and the men’s own health in prison experience. Two case studies from the 1880s, John Burns and John Burke resonated strongly with the men and were developed into mini scripts.

Actors Tommy O’Neill and Neilí Conroy then performed these scripts in a series of theatre workshops led by the men from the Bridge Project. During this process, the men authored monologues using their own experience of healthcare in Irish prison in the late 20^th century as well as their responses to the historic research. Their monologues were incorporated into the script for The Trial along with responses from the Irish Prison Service, a prison chaplain, an addiction councellor, two former prison governors and a representative from the Irish Penal Reform Trust. Combined, these accounts present a compelling story of healthcare in prison.

In 1847, the Shell Store where The Trial is exhibited was first a prison hospital. Then it was converted into a juvenile prison that held up to 100 boys. The Trial makes explicit use of this history to physically and poetically reference healthcare in prison over time.

Director Dr Sinead McCann

Script Writer Sarah Meaney

Video production Mary Caffrey and Dan Monk Sixbetween

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