Three artistic projects get €60,000 in funds from
THREE ARTISTS have been chosen to carry out community visual art projects costing €20,000 each under the Per Cent for Art scheme which allocated funding from the Enniscorthy M11 bypass road contract.
The selected artists are Maria McKinney, Christine Mackey and an artists’ collective comprising Ciara Roche, Astrid Newman and Becks Butler. All are visual art commissions and will run from February 2019 with public exhibitions due to take place between July and November.
Maria McKinney, a Dublin-based artist who has worked with Waterford Healing Arts Trust and recently completed a residency in the UCD School of Science, will work with the farming community in the Enniscorthy and Gorey Municipal Districts, on a project which will involve farmers’ responding to memories of their own farms and animals while thinking about contemporary agricultural innovations and the future.
The project will link Teagasc, local farmers and the Cowhouse Artists’ Studios in Rathnure where some of the sculptures will be made. The result will be sculptural works inspired by each farm and conversations with farmers, photographic images of the farms, an exhibition, a publication and a public parade or performance. Some of the work will be exhibited as part of Wexford festivals such as the Rockin Food Festival in Enniscorthy.
Christine Mackey is a graduate of the National College of Art and Design and Dartington College of Arts in Devon with a PhD from the University of Ulster in Belfast and has a special artistic interest in plant life, ecology and the environment.
She will work with local communities and bee-keeping associations in Enniscorthy and Gorey to raise awareness about the plight of bees or wild pollinators in a project called ‘Safe Hold – Pollinating Pastures’.
She will focus on bees, their habitat loss, their relationship to food, places and people and will attempt to propose creative solutions. One of the outcomes will be a permanent pollinating pasture to be developed with local communities in collaboration with ecologists, Wexford County Council roads department and the local authority’s biodiversity/planning officer.
The artist will also produce a film which will be publicly screened, a series of posters and a publication including seek packs.
Ciara Roche, Astrid Newman