THOMAS POOL INTERVIEWS WAYLON GARY WHITE DEER, A CHOCTAW ARTIST WITH A STRONG CONNECTION TO IRELAND, ABOUT HIS ARTISTIC BACKGROUND, PRACTICE, AND THE ENDURING INFLUENCE OF THE CHOCTAW NATION’S GIFT TO THE IRISH PEOPLE DURING THE GREAT FAMINE. Thomas Pool: What can you tell us about your artistic background? How did you come to be an artist, what motivates your work, and how has your practice evolved over the years? Waylon Gary White Deer: My first motivation was my father. There’s an almost lost genre. I’m one of the few practitioners that’s still alive, doing Traditional Indian Art, also call ..read more

Thomas Pool: For the past 25 years, Cartoon Saloon has been at the forefront of Irish animation. Nominated for several Oscars® and Golden Globes®, as well as picking up BAFTA® and Emmy® wins, your studio has brought Irish animation to audiences around the world. Can you walk us through your history, your mission, and where you’re going next? Nora Twomey: Having met while studying animation at Ballyfermot College in the 1990s, a dozen of us animators really gelled as creatives, and wanted to draw together and make stories for the screen. We didn’t want to emigrate, as many of our peers were doi ..read more

Thomas Pool: Elk Studios is part of Ireland’s fast-growing animation industry. What can you tell us about the organisation, its history, mission, and where it’s going? Aisling Conroy: We are a boutique animation studio, nestled in the heart of Dundalk that brings a wealth of experience from other high-profile studios and projects. The studio was founded by Producer Ian Hamilton in 2017 with the team growing its core to nine people since then. Ian wanted to do something a little different and setup a studio away from the usual animation hubs in the country. Elk is a studio that emphasises work ..read more

From the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media. 18 April 2024. Ireland’s Representation at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia – opened today Thursday 18 April. The exhibition, ROMANTIC IRELAND by artist Eimear Walshe, is curated by Sara Greavu with Project Arts Centre. Ireland at Venice is an initiative of Culture Ireland in partnership with the Arts Council. Director of Culture Ireland, Sharon Barry and the Director of the Arts Council, Maureen Kennelly, today opened the exhibition, which presents a multi-channel vide ..read more

Project Arts Centre  15 December 2023 – 10 February 2024 “God created man in his own image…” – Genesis 1:27  In machine-learning, a ‘Ground Truth’ is the original image from which an artificially intelligent system trains itself – it is a given reality one seeks to model. On one wall of the Project Arts Centre gallery space, we see projected Untitled (After Sensory Primer), the computer-generated viscera of a human anatomy, beginning with the muscular cycles of a foot taking a step. The sounds of synths, of drones, of a child babbling, resonate across the room. Through a pale glow we ..read more

THOMAS POOL INTERVIEWS THE ARTISTS FROM THE FREELANDS ARTIST PROGRAMME AT PS² AND THE  FREELANDS STUDIO FELLOW. Thomas Pool: How has your participation in PS2’s Freelands Artist Programme helped you grow and evolve your practice in ways that wouldn’t have been possible without it? Christopher Steenson: That’s a difficult question to answer. After two years being on the programme, it’s now difficult to imagine an alternative version of reality, where it wasn’t part of my life. I’ve just been trying to keep my head above water, making the work I need to make. I suppose being part of a progr ..read more

Crawford Art Gallery 8 December 2023 – 5 March 2024 Looped in Crawford Art Gallery’s projection space, as part of an ongoing screening series entitled ‘The Power of Us’, Venus Patel’s Eggshells is a short film made in response to a transphobic assault in which she was pelted with eggs. The egg is already an object loaded with symbolism. As the artist points out, its psychological and symbolic meanings include the power of reincarnation, birth, nature, and hope, as well as the ability to belittle or humiliate.  As part of her project exploring her experience as a transfemme of colour, navi ..read more

Temporary Pleasure Rave Architecture Collective Temporary Pleasure was conceptualised in 2018 as a response to the nightlife crisis in Ireland, where the most restrictive licensing in Europe applies, and more clubs were closing than opening. Inspired by temporary clubs and DIY movements since the 1960s, founder and space-maker, John Leo Gillen, explored ephemerality as a way to dance around the red tape associated with permanent bricks and mortar spaces, and to better meet the needs and energies of cultural moments and local scenes. He imagined a club with no fixed location or time, existing o ..read more

Galway Arts Centre  10 February – 30 March 2024 During her too short lifetime, Laura Buckley developed a distinctive body of work that quickly gained international recognition. However, she has remained little-known in her own country, having only had one solo show in Ireland: ‘Waterlilies’ at mother’s tankstation in 2010. ‘Painting with Light’, curated by Eamonn Maxwell, then set itself the dual task of being an homage to the artist – the opening coincided with what would have been her 47th birthday – and bringing her work home, so to speak. The exhibition includes four of Buckley’s scul ..read more

ELLA DE BÚRCA REVIEWS YVONNE MCGUINESS’S RECENT SOLO EXHIBITION AT BUTLER GALLERY.  Upon entering Yvonne McGuinness’s exhibition at Butler Gallery, I am immediately immersed in a world where the past, present, and future enact various assemblies in a symphony of sight and sound. The exhibition, aptly titled ‘Rehearsals’, is a regional exploration of various themes, ranging from theatrical improvisation and play to political engagement and the fluidity of change in Ireland. These inquiries are encapsulated in two new video works: Priory and Schoolyard, both made in 2023. The auditory exper ..read more