ENCOUNTERS
Group exhibition of Irish and US artists at University of Notre Dame, Kylemore Abbey, Galway.
This is an exhibition of works made during the artists in residence programme.
Opening 20 November 2025 @ 6.30 pm.
BLACK CHURCH PRINT STUDIO: COLLECTORS PRINT DRAW 2025
Time & Date: 7 pm, 20th November 2025. Viewing & reception from 6 pm
Venue: Black Church Print Studio at The Library Project, 4 Temple Bar, Dublin 2
All prints are donated by Black Church Print Studio Artists
Tickets are now available via our website.
How it works?
Purchase your ticket: You'll receive a unique ticket number upon purchase.
Preview: On the evening of the Draw, November 20th, join us at The Library Project from 6 pm to preview a diverse collection of beautiful prints.
The Draw begins! At 7 pm, the Draw will commence.
Choose your print: When your ticket number is drawn, you'll have the exciting opportunity to select your favourite print from the display of works. Our collection features a wide range of abstract and more figurative work, from large-scale bold pieces to delicate smaller works, and includes various fine art print techniques such as etching, lithography, relief, and screen print.
Each print is generously donated by our Black Church Print Studio Artists, and many are valued at two or three times the ticket price.
Build your art collection and support the Black Church Print Studio.
The support of our Collectors is greatly appreciated and helps us support hundreds of artists with access to specialised printing facilities in the heart of Dublin City.
CHLADNI AKUSTIK IV, (edition 8/9)
Combined print media; digital, screen print and linocut, on Fabriano Botanical, 50 X 50 cm
Limited edition of 9. Value: 350
The Soft Fall of Land →
The Soft Fall of Land
5 – 27 September 2025
Curated by Ciara Hickey
Preview: Thursday 4 September 2025 from 6 – 8 pm at The Library Project, 4 Temple Bar, Dublin 2.
Featuring selected BCPS and invited artists: Bassam Issa Al-Sabah, Sighle Bhreathnach-Cashell, Chloe Brenan, Aisling Conroy, Grace Ryan, Soft Fiction Projects
Aisling Conroy: Frequency, digital print & monoprint, Hahnemühle 308 gsm, Edition 1/1.
Black Church Print Studio is delighted to present the soft fall of land curated by Ciara Hickey.
This exhibition brings together new work by Bassam Issa al-Sabah, Sighle Bhreathnach-Cashell, Chloe Brenan, Aisling Conroy, Grace Ryan and Soft Fiction Projects. It considers the idea of Utopia and examines the pursuit of this imagined, impossible and aspirational state from a range of perspectives. The artworks in the exhibition oscillate between escapism and activism, fantasy and instruction for creating an alternative, better world.
Sighle Bhreathnach-Cashell and Bassam Issa al-Sabah have each made a new series of prints directing us into dense, imagined worlds, created from a personal lexicon of symbols drawn from the artists’ history, experience and critical response to the humanitarian, social and ecological issues pervading contemporary life.
Al-Sabah’s monochromatic prints, made during his Process Residency at Black Church Studios, evoke imagery from his moving image works and installations, where sublime, seductive digital landscapes offer speculative worlds in which dystopian and utopian scenarios meet and intersect. Bhreathnach-Cashell, known for her immersive installations and activist work has created a new series of aquatint etchings, ‘Ulster Cycles’. The work translates years of the artist’s unseen drawings and depict mimetic figures using Celtic, biological and architectural imagery, conjuring contemporary fables and cautionary tales.
For Grace Ryan and Chloe Brenan, two studio members at Black Church Print Studio, the invitation to think about Utopian ideals led them to a close examination of the natural world. Ryan will create a sculptural composition in the gallery based on Ikebana—the ancient Japanese art of flower arrangement rooted in balance, asymmetry, and the harmony between humans and nature.
Chloe Brenan’s current work is focused on the microcosm of an orchard in Carlow that is located beside her family home. Originally created as a colonial project to order and control the land, the orchard is now overgrown, the traces of colonial past are muted by the unabetted growth of weeds and shrubs over decades. The artist has used Super 8 photography to mark the process of observing the orchard and acknowledging the small changes and diversity of plant life as dictated by time, climate and chance. Brenan’s work in this exhibition represents the first and last frames of a roll of film on which she photographed the orchard, the edges of which are singed, capturing the moment that an image is simultaneously created and extinguished.
Black Church Print Studio member Aisling Conroy continues her exploration of sound and cymatics, the study of vibrational phenomena. This new work comprises a grid of 40 prints representing the 40 Chladni plates, a methodology developed by Ernst Chladni in 1787 as a visual manifestation of sound vibrations, looking at the patterns produced by sounds on flat plates made by a bow. The work offers an invitation to think about the invisible forces that shape our reality and consider the possibilities of new languages and systems for understanding and grappling with the unknown.
Soft Fiction Projects (Alessia Cargnelli and Emily McFarland) are an initiative that produce printed and digital matter to explore archives of underrepresented voices, oppositional histories and geopolitical narratives. For the exhibition they have produced a free print that can be taken by visitors. The print is based on Women’s News, a Belfast collective-run publication active between 1984 and 2011, who used the medium of print matter as a method for generating common ground, sharing experiences and encouraging community building. This leaflet uses DIY approaches to archival material, collected from MayDay Rooms, as a way to reimagine and revisit this history.
Exhibition continues until Saturday 27 September 2025.
Opening hours: Mon – Fri 11 am – 6 pm, Sat 12 – 6 pm.
Late Opening for Culture Night: Fri 19 Sept. 2025. Open until 9 pm.
SIGN, SYMBOL, WORD: Curated By The Project Twins
SIGN, SYMBOL, WORD
Curated by The Project Twins for Birr Vintage Week & Arts Festival
1st - 8th August 2025
From stone carvings to digital code, people have always used symbols to make sense of the world. This open call invites artists to play with, disrupt, or reimagine the signs and symbols that shape our experience. How do meaning, form, and context shift when language becomes image, or image speaks like language.
TOTEM: Síle, Naga, Anubis, Druid; Aisling Conroy
Acrylic on wood; 104 x 84 x 2 cm (quadriptych)
Totems, historically imbued with spiritual and cultural significance, serve as personal anchors, carrying meaning and memory. In times of uncertainty, we seek symbols, objects that ground us, remind us of strength, and connect us to something beyond the chaos that we are currently experiencing.
These Totem works are part of a larger series (in drawing, painting and print) that explores the totem as a vessel for resilience, drawing from ancient archetypes both in Irish and world history that have guided humanity through transitions for centuries.
Selected for this quadriptych is the Druid a keeper of nature’s wisdom, represents the deep-rooted knowledge and balance we need to navigate upheaval, also represented as the Head of Janus, Roman god of beginnings, endings, transitions, gates, and doorways; Síle (Sheela Na Gig) is a raw symbol of the divine feminine, birth, rebirth and has been used for protection; Naga (the snake), embodies transformation, shedding the past, and renewal in times of personal or collective crisis; and finally, Anubis /(the Black Dog in Irish culture) the ancient Egyptian guardian of the afterlife, stands as a reminder of death, rebirth and safe passage, the acceptance of change, and the ability to walk between worlds with courage.
To further emphasise the primal and universal nature of these totems, the use of primitive drawing techniques, evokes the raw, unfiltered expressions of early human mark-making. These simplified yet strong forms strip away excess, allowing the symbols to resonate on an instinctual level. Like ancient cave paintings and petroglyphs/ rock carvings, they serve as a direct link to our collective past, reminding us that in times of uncertainty, we can turn to the most fundamental aspects of expression to find guidance and meaning.
Featured Artist: Poetry Ireland Review Issue #145, Edited by Victoria Kennefick
Honoured be the featured artist, both on the cover and throughout in the Spring edition of The Poetry Ireland Review, Issue 145, Edited by Victoria Kennefick and including contributions from an incredible line up of Irish poets and writers.
This edition features new poems from Aoife Lyall, Victoria Chang, Joe Carrick-Varty, Éireann Lorsung, and Padraig Regan as well as work from emerging poets Cora Crampton and Kasandra Ferguson, among many others. Irish-language editor Aifric Mac Aodha’s selection includes poetry from Áine Ní Ghlinn, Ceaití Ní Bheildiúin, and an essay on the poetry of Deirdre Brennan from Proinsias Ó Drisceoil.
The issue also remembers Michael Longley in a eulogy by Fran Brearton.
In the 2025 spring issue, there are a total of 26 books reviewed which speak on displacement, how to find firm ground in a world of constant change and chaos, and the complex intersections of identity and place. There are reviews of exciting new collections from Charles Lang, Patrick Cotter, and Anne Fitzgerald, as well as the highly original debut collections from Scott McKendry and Jeremy Haworth.
Other prose in this issue includes Caroline Bird’s essay ‘Poets and Clowns’, featuring exactly what you think it does, along with an interview with Eileen Myles reflecting on their journey as a ‘pathetic’ poet in New York, conducted by Hugo Jeudy and Lika Gorskaia.
Poetry Ireland Review Issue 145 will be available to purchase online and in leading bookshops around Ireland from May 2025.
》Video is a repost from @poetryireland
》Cover image: Vertigo, digital illustration, 2020.
PANORAMA: An Exhibition of 3 Contemporary Irish Artists GALLERY UXVAL GOCHEZ , BARCELONA 13 - 31 MARCH 2025
Panorama - An Exhibition of 3 Contemporary Irish Artists – Aisling Conroy, Claire Halpin and Mark Redden at Uxval Gochez Gallery and Project Space in Barcelona in March 2025. The exhibition will present a curated installation of newly created artworks from each of the three exhibiting artists comprising painting, sculpture, sound and film responding to the space and context of the gallery.
Panorama, as title and concept of the show, as a human-made all-encompassing view. An artificially constructed scene that is so immersive as to completely captivate the viewer. It is something that could at one time offer serene views and a chance to calm the mind, or it could perturb with turbulent images of conflict and destruction. Either way, the scene is set to create a reaction, response or a reconsideration.
In this vein, the practices of the three Irish artists; Conroy, Halpin and Redden offer different ways of working with similar global concerns. Their work shares holistic and compassionate responses to some of the world’s ongoing dilemmas: war, spiritual imbalance, environmental disaster. In their work these artists propose an alternate perspective - alternative histories, viewpoints, directions and narratives.
From the chaos of everyday life, to the global storm we are experiencing, we are taken from the moment and reminded of something else that lies in the painted, the instinctive mark, gestural and primal, the worked surface. That in the smallest detail one can find the greatest answers, that what is overlooked is often what you were seeking.
The exhibition, Panorama, is the coming together of the work of artists who work in the realms of the collective consciousness, who seek a holistic connection with the world and create artworks that seek to steer a course through unsettling times. That we might pause to consider and reflect on the whole body and the cells that constitute it, we might think of our part in the whole.
Official Launch: Thursday 13 March 19.30 - 21.30h
To Be Opened by Uxval Gochez
Artist in Conversation 19.30-20.00h (TBA)
For further queries, please contact: uxvalgochezgallery@gmail.com
Opening hours: Tuesday to Friday - 11:00 to 14:00.
If you wish to visit us in any other time frame, please make an appointment: +34 627864011
Aisling Conroy: Primal Unveil I Acrylic on birch plywood, 55 x 45 x 2 cm, 2025
Mark Redden: The Reason Why, Oil on linen on plywood, 76 x 135 cm, 2025
Claire Halpin: Refugee Refuseé, Oil on Gesso on Board, 37cm X 57cm, 2024
Out of Time, The Black Church Print Studio, 13 - 26 Feb 2025
Out of Time
14 – 26 February 2025
Curated by Áine O’Hara with the support of Black Church Print Studio
Preview: Thursday 13 February 2025 from 6 – 8 pm at The Library Project, 4 Temple Bar, Dublin 2.
Masked Previews by appointment 11 and 12 February 2025.
Featuring selected BCPS and invited artists: Aisling Conroy, An Gee Chan, Caoimhe Dalton, Jamila Prowse, Paul Roy, Finnegan Shannon and Catherine Togher-Ward
Black Church Print Studio is delighted to present Out of time curated by Áine O’Hara, recipient of Black Church Emerging Curator Award 2025.
“Rather than bend disabled bodies and minds to meet the clock, crip time bends the clock to meet disabled bodies and minds” Alison Kafer
Time is often considered a linear process, we move from the past to the present and forward to the future. Crip time is a form of time travel. Disability and illness have the ability to pull us out of linear, progressive time with its standard life stages and thrust us into a realm of erratic acceleration, tedious delays and sudden endings. Disabled and sick bodies and minds do not often conform to a normative idea of time.
The medical terminology of illness attempts to reimpose linearity, discussing chronic conditions, progression, terminal stages, relapses and phase. But those living in crip time know that experience is never linear and quietly – or not so quietly – resent the calm straightforwardness of those who exist within the confines of normative time.
Aisling Conroy, An Gee Chan, Caoimhe Dalton, Jamila Prowse, Paul Roy and Catherine Togher-Ward have used printmaking, painting, sculpture, drawing, mark making, textiles and video work as an alternative way to keep time, to communicate and to connect. Time is recorded in movement and creation rather than scheduling, deadlines and hours.
Out of time invites the audience out of their daily lives into the world of crip time. Rather than us bending to meet commonplace capitalistic versions of scheduling, deadlines, hours, crip time offers you a glimpse into an alternate timeline. This exhibition aims to give space to sick and disabled creatives, as well as abled creatives who operate within a non normative idea of time and productivity.
This exhibition provides a physical space where rest is prioritised in the centre of Dublin city.
Exhibition continues until Wednesday 26 February 2025 and includes a number of associated events including workshops and talks.
Opening hours: Mon – Fri 11 am – 6 pm, Sat 12 – 6 pm.
This exhibition is kindly supported by Dublin City Council and the Arts Council.
SUNDAY INDEPENDENT: PEOPLE & CULTURE: ART: WHAT LIES BENEATH
SUNDAY INDEPENDENT, People & Culture Magazine, Art: What Lies Beneath by Niall McMonagle
TOTALLY DUBLIN: INCANTATIONS: SEPTEMBER ISSUE by FEATURES EDITOR ADHAMH Ó'CAOIMH
Totally Dublin, Culture, Art, INCANTATIONS, by Adhamh Ó’ Caoimh, p. 46
THE GLOSS MAGAZINE: Artistic License: Aisling Conroy by Penny McCormick
‘Shrine Portal,’ by Aisling Conroy
Working with paint, print, installation, experimental film and sound, artist Aisling Conroy’s new exhibition delves into the metaphysical realm …
What or kickstarted your interest in art?
I was always drawing and making things as a child and was encouraged by my
family growing up, so it always felt very natural. Art was always my own
language, my own way of expressing myself. It has helped me make sense of
the world, and still does.
‘Chladni Akustik 3,’ by Aisling Conroy
How has your artistic journey evolved from college to practice?
I started studying Animation in Dun Laoghaire School of Art and Design
(IADT) in 2004 for two years. After that, I did a BA in Fine Art Printmaking in
National College of Art and Design, and from there I went on to do an MA in
Fine Art. I adopted painting soon after I graduated and rented my first studio in Talbot Street Studios in Dublin, where I was surrounded mostly by painters, so it must have rubbed off!
During that time, I was working in NCAD, in the library and archive on archival projects and managing the film and image library. Now I’ve gone full circle and I’ve been back working in the animation industry since 2017. I was an associate artist with the Olivier Cornet gallery for six years and then moved back to my hometown in Portlaoise in 2020, where I’ve continued to hone my practice.
‘Primal Nine,’ by Aisling Conroy
What was the starting point for your new exhibition “Incantations”?
Sound and meditation have been an ongoing source of interest that has
underpinned my work since 2010. I have always been drawn to sacred and
spiritual art, even as a young child, and this has followed me through to how I
think about art and how I approach making it.
I hope that the viewer of my exhibition feels that they are entering into a sacred space and it moves them. The work is very meditative and visceral. I want it to unearth something deep inside, a sense of expansion yet connected. I’ll be guiding the viewers into a deeper journey of the work through a meditation and a sound bath, and on Friday September 20, when TØN Gallery will be open for Culture Night, with a musical performance from special guests, Varo.
‘Chladni Akustik 2,’ by Aisling Conroy
How and where do you work?
I work between a home studio and for larger scale works, a bigger workshop,
both in Portlaoise. For any printmaking work, I work from the Black Church
Print Studio in Dublin, where I’m a member. I initially draw, paint and collage
in sketchbooks, then, when I’m planning paintings or printing, I work digitally
in Photoshop so I can test it before execution – this helps especially with the bigger
paintings.
You’re drawn to the metaphysical realm – how is this shown in your work?
The new work delves into the metaphysical realm guided by colour, form,
vibration, cymatics. I use symbology and repeated motifs throughout the
work to create an interconnectedness between the past and the present,
particularly in referencing ancient mark-making. The exhibition also looks at
energy, movement and the five elements that are the primal building blocks
of existence. I hope that the meditative nature of the work allows for a more
visceral experience of the metaphysical and to hint at an unseen reality.
Need to Know: “Incantations” by Aisling Conroy will open at TØN Gallery, 25A Temple Lane South, Temple Bar, Dublin 2 on August 29 and runs until September 21.
On Saturday, September 14 from 12pm-1.30pm there will be a conversation with Aisling before a sound bath and meditation session.
For more information visit www.tondublin.com.
READ THE ARTICLE ONLINE HERE
IRISH TIMES MAGAZINE: ARTFUL EMOTION BY NADINE O'REGAN
The Irish Times Magazine, Saturday 24th August 2024
INCANTATIONS at TØN Gallery 29 August - 21 September 2024
TØN Gallery is pleased to present INCANTATIONS, a solo exhibition by Aisling Conroy. In this new body of work, Conroy delves into the metaphysical realm guided by the themes of sound, vibration and cymatics. Working with paint, print, installation, experimental film and sound, Conroy’s multifaceted work invites its audience on a journey beyond the visible world, exploring the unseen forces that shape our reality. “Throughout my practice I explore the idea of intention, repetition and reincarnation, drawing on influences from mystical and visionary art as well as sound and cymatics. My work combines texture, colour and movement to create a heightened sense of introspection on the nature of existence. I create abstractions of the subconscious by using repeated motifs, shapes, colour and form in a very visceral way and always with an interest in spirituality and connecting to a higher consciousness”.
Aisling Conroy is a multidisciplinary artist using painting, print animation. She graduated from The National College of Art and Design with a BA Hons degree in Fine Art Print, 2009; and a Master of Fine Art postgraduate degree, 2011. Her work is represented in public and private collections, both nationally and internationally (US, UK, Spain, China, India). She has been working in the audio-visual sector since 2017. Aisling is the Writer and Director of the award winning animated short film BARDO (2021). She is currently working with Elk Studios as an Episodic Director, as well as having directed their short film The Last Set (2023). Conroy is a member of the Black Church Print Studio and has been the recipient of Arts Council Funding, Creative Ireland Film Bursary and the Centre Culturel Irlandais Bursary to name a few. INCANTATIONS will be Conroy’s tenth solo exhibition.
INCANTATIONS will have its official launch on Thurs 29th August, followed by a series of events throughout the month of September. All details and links below.
Thurs 29th August 6pm - 8pm: Exhibition launch and reception: No booking required.
Saturday 14th Sept 12- 1.30pm: Conversation with the Artist including a sound bath and meditation: Free event but booking is essential. Book HERE.
Friday 20th September 7pm - 8pm: Culture Night with special guests Varo: Free event but booking is essential for this performance. Book HERE.
The exhibition is open to the public on Friday 20th September 12.30 - 9pm.
For further queries, please contact:
Mark Redden TØN Gallery 25A Temple Ln S, Temple Bar, Dublin 2, D02 KV62
Email: tondublin@gmail.com
Phone: +34 722 31 43 55 / +353 87 932 4613
Gallery opening hours: Thurs - Sunday, 12.30 - 3.30pm.
Image: Aisling Conroy. SHRINE: PORTAL (2024) ; Acrylic on wood; 72 x 76 x 2cm.
Ardgillan Gallery Summer Exhibition: 13. JUNE. 2024
Ardgillan Gallery Summer Exhibition opens on Thursday 13th June from 5pm - 7pm and runs to 21st July 2024.
The gallery opens from Wednesday to Sunday from 10am to 4pm.
INCANTATIONS, acrylic on wood; 104 x 67 x 2cm, included in the group exhibition at Ardgillan Gallery.
Visual Artists Ireland: 'mini-Van' Magazine: Irish Animation | ELK Studios | Aisling Conroy →
Thank you to journalist Thomas Pool and Visual Artists Ireland for inviting me to chat about Elk Studios and the animation industry for their online magazine, 'mini Van' .
Read the full article HERE
ORION, 76 x 72 x 2 cm, Acrylic on wood.
OUTCOMES: Group Exhibition, Ranelagh Arts Centre, in assocation with the RHA SCHOOL
OUTCOMES, Ranelagh Arts 12-26 April 2024
Exhibition text by Monika Crowley
‘Being an artist in the lifeworld can be a lonely prospect. This group of artists, whom I worked with alongside Colin Martin and a host of visiting artists over the span of a year, have come together, on the back of the RHA Correspondence of 2023, to make an exhibition. I speak for all who gave their undivided attention and energy to the process, we couldn’t have wished for a better outcome: an artists-led exhibition’, James Merrigan
Outcomes is an exhibition of new work by the 2023 alumni of the RHA’s ‘Critical Correspondence Course’. The Critical Correspondence Course is a process we signed up for because each of us knew, regardless of what stage our artistic careers were at or the kind of practice we were engaged in, that something needed shaking up: a change in approach, subject matter or medium; a need to share new work on which we wanted feedback from our peers and other critical voices; a time to plumb the depths of our art making and ask ‘why?’, ‘for whom’ and ‘what if’…
We knew it wasn’t going to be easy, and we didn’t want to be easy. We made new work responding to periodic in-person and written feedback sessions throughout the year (both one-to-one and in plenary) and presented it back to our group, a visiting artist, and art critic/artist James Merrigan. Then the cycle repeated.
For the current show, we committed to showing not only works we consider finished, but also works that represent avenues of exploration that are still ‘in progress’, and even those that seemed to reach interesting dead ends that became jumping-off points for other work. Every piece in the current show was created in the last 12 months and emerged out of, and in response/reaction to, the Critical Correspondence Course. What you see today are the Outcomes.
Exhibiting Artists: Aisling Conroy, Anna Boyle, Ann Marie Webb, Bonnie Kavanagh, Darina Meagher, Gearoid O’Dea, Jonathan Brennan, Lauren Conway, Lucy Peters, Noelle Gallagher, Michelene Huggard, Monika Crowley, Shane Hynan, Siobhan O'Callaghan,
Outset Xmas Open, Outset Gallery, Galway: 1st December 2023
Delighted to have this work exhibited in the Outset Xmas Open, Outset Gallery, Galway.
The show opens Fri 1st - 23rd December.
MORE INFO: outset-galway.myshopify.com
CANTA I
Acrylic on wood
26 x 20 x 1.5 cm
GOMA’s 7th Annual Members Exhibition: 1st December 2023
GOMA’s 7th Annual Members Exhibition is launching this Friday 1st December 2023 at 6pm to 8pm.
Exhibition continues until the 3rd of January 2024. All welcome!⭐️
MORE INFO: www.gomawaterford.ie
WOMB II
Acrylic on wood
80 x 52 x 2 cm
TØN GALLERY: 36 ARTISTS HERE AND NOW: 3rd - 30th November 2023
36 Artists, Here and Now, curated by Helen Kirk and Mark Redden.
Launch night Friday 3rd November @ 5pm.
Exhibition runs until 30th November.
Artists include…
☆Suzanne Dolan
☆Moezee
☆ Aisling Conroy
☆Lorraine Lawlor
☆Pablo Marín Garcia
☆Sinead McKillican
☆Tina Poole
☆Maree Hensey
☆Nikki Foster
☆Ciaran Meister
☆Anna Marie Savage
☆Aisling Dunne
☆Kelan Molloy
☆Kevin McSherry
☆Richard Coghlan
☆Elize de Beer
☆Ishmael Claxton
☆Shane Hynan
☆Christopher Banahan
☆Julianne Guinee
☆Daria Ivanishchenko
☆Claire Halpin
☆Kam Catala
☆Kevin Judge
☆Paula Lemaine
☆Emily McGardle
☆Sheila Flaherty
☆Cynthia Fanning
☆Rachel Kenny
☆Desmond Kenny
☆Eva Vitkute
☆Sorcha McNamarra
☆Francesc Ruiz Abad
☆Tom Campbell
Punch & Fable: Interview #4: Aisling Conroy
In August 2021 I did a short interview with Steph Sheehan of Punch & Fable it was only available to subscribers at the time and now it has been published for all to read.
☆Link below☆ Lovely to be alongside the other fierce women/ artists/ creators being interviewed by Steph☆
Thanks to Steph Sheahan for inviting me to interview and asking some lovely questions, I really enjoyed it. Check out the #Punchandfable website to see all the latest interviews, art, food, yoga, poetry by P&F, so inspiring!
RHAPSODY: SOLO EXHIBITION AT RARA RESIDENCIA FEB 2022
In this new work, Conroy explores ideas of collective identity and ancestry through the mediums of painting, photography and experimental animation techniques. .
Through the alchemy of colour, moving image and sound, the artist creates a rhapsody of fractals between life and death, signifying a memento to the eternal, the collective identity; and a homage to the ancestors and community of Villanueva Del Rosario.
Kaleidoscopic images made from a local photographic archive, mirror and depict scenes of a united community; men and women at work, children playing, weddings, local parades and events, family occasions and business owners on the backdrop of rural life from the early 20th century to the present. These altered images with complex patterns are then layered with paintings and drawings akin to the artist's idiosyncratic compositions and mark making that evoke a sacred geometry as well as signs and symbols of the eastern philosophies and cosmology. Conroy continues this treatment with a short experimental animation piece, connecting these photographs with line drawings and painted textures, in a rhythmic and memorising sequence to create a lexicon of her own esoteric language. This work is also accompanied by a composition created by the artist Maria De Grandy, which incorporates sounds that both artists collected while on residency in Villanueva Del Rosario.
This type of approach, using recurring motifs, colour and abstract forms, is what the artist refers to as a “chromatherapy” with the aim of giving the selected images from the archive a contemporary “healing” or rebirth.
In recalling our ancestors, the work attempts to universally symbolise the boundless and cyclical nature of humanity, and interconnectedness between the dead and the living, and also hopes to acknowledge the ever-evolving demographic of the village, which is slowly becoming a mountainous haven for a new generation of artists and creatives from Malaga, the wider Andalusia region and internationally.
RHAPSODY is a collaboration with local historian Franciso Álvarez Curie, and Valencia based musician and sound artist María De Grandy. The exhibition is curated by Vero Frias and Cyro Garcia, RARA residencia.