2024
Exhibition Residencies
The three resident artists (Tara Baoth Mooney, Rian Trench and Diarmuid Mac Diarmada) have spent 2 months as part of the Creative Exchange Residency. While on-site the trio has been making field recordings around the Glens and LSC as the starting point for an extended sonic poem based on wind and percussive elements emanating from the buildings themselves.
The artists have invited a number of musicians to respond to both buildings and initial recordings and will be working on a multi-sensory piece in collaboration with the two buildings. These new layers of responsive sound will then be incorporated into an overall synaesthesic soundscape.
The final piece will be an iterative and experimental composition that will unfold from fixed and free elements.
Tara Baoth Mooney
25/02/22 – 14/10/22
I grew up in the Burren perfumery, Co. Clare. I am a singer and visual artist looking for ways of exploring hidden human stories. My most recent work due for submission in Dec 2020 is a practice based PHD (University of Wolverhampton) where I am exploring loss of sense of self through drawing and textile artifacts for people living with dementia. I used to design garments for a living and worked as the design director of an outerwear company in China from 2005-2007. It was there that I saw the damage being done because of textile production in the East. My work looks at the hidden stories within our objects - particularly clothing and textiles and brings it to the surface to tease out the deeper meanings which lie behind them. Meanings around human attachment and lived experience. Garments can become a sort of cladding- an interface between people and the environment they inhabit. I use drawing, stitch and cloth, sound and print, as tools to explore these ideas further.
My work oscillates between ideas around sense of self, the surrounding elements within which self sits and questions around interruption of self and consequently, ownership of sense of self within that space. In the case of this application I am proposing to work for the first time in a collaboration to extend my artistic practice beyond the familiar places that I work within. The experience of a prolonged illness, has been an opportunity for deep personal observation and reflection after having undergone complete interruption and disintegration of my former sense of self. All of this led to new understandings of my own boundaries and their fluidity as I observed these migrations through transient states of being during my illness and recovery.
Tara Baoth Mooney is an interdisciplinary artist whose work encompasses sound, performance, textiles, drawing, and video. Tara’s work is often site-specific and responds to events past and present which explore lived experience and the inter-relationship of people and practice, daily ritual and objects within their respective ecologies. The work oscillates between historical foundations of meaning making in context, current social constructive elements where self and meaning sit in context, and the interruption of self, the unmaking of meaning through destruction of context.
She works in collaboration with The Clumsy Giantess, a shadow persona that enables her to engage with her art practice in a unique way and offers new perspectives with which to engage with the world around her. Tara is a studio holder at the Leitrim Sculpture Centre, Manorhamilton Co. Leitrim.
Mooney has just completed an art-based research PhD which focused on the relationship between people, lived experience and garments within an ecopsychosocial framework. Her work has brought her from the Jim Henson Studio in New York, to the heart of fashion and textiles in China, Bangladesh and India. Along with the Creative Exchange Residency at Leitrim Sculpture Centre, she has been artist in residence in Banglanatak, Kolkata. Prabartana, Dhaka. UAL, SMARTlab at UCD, The Hawkswell, Sligo.
(The sound and field work from a residency in West Bengal is featured in The Spirit of Place: Encounters with the Bauls and Fakirs of West Bengal. Harvey, Takhar. (eds.) Fletcher and Ingun Klepp (eds.): Storytelling and cherished garments in ‘Opening up the Wardrobe’ (Fletcher/Klepp 2017); The Craft of Use: Post-Growth Fashion (Fletcher, 2016). Her work on grief and garments is featured in ‘A Guide to Sustainable Fashion’ by Alison Gwilt (2014).)
Rian Trench
25/02/22 – 14/10/22
I've been experimenting with sound art from an early age and began working as a music producer and recordist in a studio I set up in Wicklow called The Meadow. This work has been going steadily for 10 years and has drawn me into a deep fascination with human behaviour. Working so closely with artists on their respective works brings about fascinating insights into what drives people to create, whether they operate from a purely egoic position or a one that draws from fluency of self and subconscious instinct. These insights into human behaviour have inspired my move from purely audio work into visual arts.
My work as a film maker is currently focused on exploring a deeper understanding of human impulses. Self-destruction, abuse of others and self and our animalistic drives towards sex, violence and all forms of territorialism have many ways of being portrayed through film that I have not seen before. I wish to expand on these themes through this medium. My aim as an artist is to create works that illustrate these human traits in original ways. I believe that the successful execution of my work will have positive effects for viewers in the realms of mental health and perspective on self and self-empowerment. My work aims to allow the viewer an opportunity to gain realisation of what is already inherent in the nature of humanity and our ability to make conscious, proactive changes to the way we interact with the world.
Rian Trench is a film maker and multi-instrumentalist with experience of playing in many different musical ensembles. He has made several live music videos as part of the Deaf Brothers Production team based in Wicklow. Rian has created conceptual video pieces one of which was commissioned by experimental Irish band Alarmist for their song "Life In Half Time" in which explores themes of abuse cycles and self destruction.
Trench composes for film and video, records original pieces and scores for orchestrations. He produces musical works for various artists and has a diverse knowledge of sound recording and track mixing: as a sound engineer with Bedlam Suitcase on their debut album, The Fourth Wall as well as other collaborations with Llankum All Tvvins, Bitch Falcon, Glimmermen, Haiku, How To Dress Well, I Am The Cosmos, Interskalactic, J. Colleran, Jan Ince, Jetsetter,, Little X's For Eyes, Lone, Magic Pockets, Pierce Turner, Planet Mu, Saint Sister, Spies, Sue Rynhart, The Lost Brothers, Thumper, Till They're All Broken, Tiny Ark, Toby Kaar, Tucan, Umbra, Vyvienne long, Warp Records, Wyvern Lingo and Ye Vagabonds.
Diarmuid MacDiarmada
25/02/22 – 14/10/22
Diarmuid Dermody’s work deals in the elusive (illusive) boundaries between self and society, between myth and fact and in the particularly plural world of poison and medicine. An agent of positive change is the right thing at the right time in the right dosage.
Further education in theology, education and music deepened many aspects of Dermody’s practice but visual art has remained a significant part of his work and surfaced most recently in a commission from Thirty-Three 45 in Drogheda to contribute as featured artist to an edition of the Drag Acid audio-visual magazine. Recent commissions include a sound-work entitled ‘This Ends Now’ for the Drogheda Arts Festival 2020.
Diarmuid MacDiarmada (b. 1972) discovered a passion for drawing and for music before he hit his teens in suburban Dublin. He escaped the perils of a formal art education in 1991 and embarked on a journey in music that saw him performing in situations from pubs and clubs to the streets of many international cities, to forests, prison waiting-rooms and mental institutions, in some of the great venues of the world and on national TV and radio, to name a few. Various adventures in remedial music work, event-management and set-design and soundtrack work for theatre further informed his practice. Commissions have included many sculpture and mixed media installations as well as the music for the opening ceremony of the Solstice Arts Centre in Navan. Dermody’s theatre work includes soundtracks and workshops for Graffiti Theatre Company, Activate Youth Theatre, Limerick Youth Theatre, Helium Arts, Playback Theatre as well as many independent producers such as The Jimmy Cake and The Tycho Brahe, both of which achieved considerable success in Ireland and where Dermody was also able to exercise his visual skills on posters, videos and sleeve-art. As producer, session-musician and featured artist, Dermody has amassed a considerable catalogue of recorded work.
Past Residencies
2024
Professional Development Residency
2024
Technical Development Residency
2023
Landscape, Ecology & Environment Research Residencies
