Landscape Symposium at WGOA
Join us on the 27th Sept, 6:30 – 8:00pm for an evening of artist talks, music, poetry, photography competition prize announcement and more…
This event coincides with the gallery’s ‘A Survey of the Landscape’ exhibition and the Landscape Alliance National Landscape Forum 2023 held at Mount Congreve, 28th – 29th Sept.
Tickets are free to the WGOA Symposium but to guarantee a place please email: waterfordgallery@waterfordcouncil.ie
Gallery will be open from 6:00pm for a 6:30pm start
Artist project Talks: Paula Barrett | Carmel Cleary
Paula Barrett is a visual artist whose multidisciplinary practice centers on the theme of landscape and the systems which inform our experience of it. She graduated from the National College of Art and Design Dublin with a BA in Fine Art Media and History of Art in 2006 and a practice/theory MA (Art in the Contemporary World) in 2010. In 2015, she initiated Turf Projects, a photographic study of the particular qualities of light and colour experienced in the Irish landscape. She has been compiling a catalogue of Irish colour palettes from around Ireland.
Born in Waterford, Carmel Cleary studied photography at the Crawford College of Art & Design in Cork. Since graduating in 1990 she has received many awards including Photographer of the year in her graduating class. She is the first ever photographer to win the prestigious Alice Berger Hammerschlag Travel Award which she used for a photographic tour of Utah & Arizona. Her other numerous awards include Arts Council Bursaries, Travel awards & Exhibition assistance funding.
Artist commission launch: Caoilfhionn Hanton
Hanton is a young Irish street artist, who has completed large murals and also smaller works across the country. A recent graduate of SETU’s Visual Art BA (Hons) she was recently awarded the Waterford Gallery of Art Graduate Commission Award.
Reshaping Art & The Landscape: Molly Twomey | Samuel Yakura | Mike Ryan
Molly Twomey grew up in Lismore, County Waterford, and graduated in 2019 with an MA in Creative Writing from University College Cork. Her first collection, Raised Among Vultures, was published in 2022 by The Gallery Press. It won the Southword Debut Collection Poetry Award, was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Poetry Prize for Best First Collection, and the Farmgate National Poetry Award. Her work has appeared in New England Review, Poetry Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Banshee, The Irish Times, Mslexia, The Stinging Fly and elsewhere. She was awarded the 2023 Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary.
Mike Ryan is the Artistic Director of Briery Gap Cultural Centre in Macroom. He has worked as an artist liaison with the Cork Midsummer Festival, reviewer and journalist for The Thin Air magazine, a script reader for the Abbey Theatre and as a judge for the Northern Ireland Music Prize. He has also participated in several prestigious arts development schemes including MAKE, Gap Day and Pop-Up and is a passionate advocate for inclusivity in the arts. He creates zines, music and works of street art through his alter ego ‘Red Mask’.
Samuel Yakura
Samuel is a Nigerian Born Writer, Poet and Performing Artist residing in Ireland. He’s a multiple-time Slam Champion both in Nigeria and Ireland, winning Slam competitions like ALS, OxFam, and Talkatives. He’s a member with the Wearegriot Poetry Collective based in Dublin. He has done commissioned works for the likes of Summer in the city, Poetry Ireland, Dublin Fringe, Adrian Brinkerhoff Foundation, IMMA, Gaisce Awards, amongst others. His works reflect heavily on observing the human condition, their relationships and interaction with society and culture. He is currently in the works with the WeareGriot collective putting together their new Poetry Play “DEITIES”
Landscape Alliance: Terry O’Regan
Over the past ten years Terry O’ Regan has lead Landscape Alliance Ireland which he founded in 1995, an informal loosely-structured NGO, whose objectives are to provide an open forum for discussing and exploring all aspects of landscape and landscape management, to engage in research, to develop a database of information and to act as advocates for effective landscape policies, strategies and instruments for implementation at European, National, Regional and Local level.
His participation in the development of the European Landscape Convention and the promotion of the Convention in Ireland led to Irelands early signing and ratifying of the Convention in March 2002.
