Gone Astray (October 2024) was inspired by Irish folklore, particularly the "stray sod" and seachrán sí—tales of wayfarers who become disoriented in familiar landscapes. The collection reflects on the creative process as a metaphorical act of "going astray," exploring dreamscapes that merge the uncanny with the unconscious. Themes of climate anxiety and humanity's fraught relationship with nature are central to the work.
For the opening night I was pleased to have folklorist Michael Fortune (folklore.ie) present local storytelling that connected landscape, history, and identity. Through this exhibition, I invited viewers to navigate introspective and disorienting landscapes, encouraging reflection on how we relate to the natural world.
@katedonaldsonphotography
'GONE ASTRAY' An exhibition of new painting by Esther O’Kelly.
The Pigyard Gallery, Wexford, is proud to present a new collection of works by Esther O’Kelly, inspired by the Irish folklore of the "stray sod" and seachrán sí. These legends recount tales of wayfarers who experience confusion and disorientation while traveling through familiar landscapes that suddenly shift into unfamiliar, otherworldly terrains. In these moments, the landscape becomes strange and unrecognizable—landmarks disappear, lights rise and drift in the distance, and the natural world turns eerie, indefinite, and unnamed.
This collection is a reflection on the experience of "going astray" within the creative process itself. The work explores dreamscapes that capture the uncanny, releasing the potential of the unconscious. Touching on themes of climate anxiety and our fraught relationship with nature, O’Kelly delves into the intersection of landscape, history, and identity, alongside personal experiences and perceptions. Each piece invites the viewer to navigate landscapes that are both familiar and unfamiliar, inviting introspection on how we relate to the natural world around us.
Exhibition dates: October 17th – November 7th, 2024.
CCA x Jerwood Arts = Supports Mentors and Mentees 2024
Pleased to announce that I was selected and paired with Mentor & Artist Joy Gerrard by CCA Derry~Londonderry in the second cohort of the CCA x Jerwood = Supports Mentoring programme. The second cohort are:
Mentees:
Amira McDonagh, Clinton Kirkpatrick, Ellen Blair, Esther O’Kelly, Lucy Mulholland, Rachael Melvin, Rebecca Strain, Seanna O’Boyle-Irvine
Mentors:
Ellen Mara De Wachter, Edy Fung, Joy Gerrard, Alison Pascoe, Laura O’Connor, Sinéad O'Neill-Nicholl, Moran Been-noon
The Mentoring scheme offers support and assistance to emerging artists in our region who are navigating the challenges of a career in the arts. Mentees will benefit from insight and knowledge shared by their mentors, who will - through these supportive and constructive sessions - bring their experience, perspectives and prompts to mentees’ practices.
The CCA x Jerwood = Supports Short Mentoring Scheme is a paid programme for both Mentors and Mentees.
Joy Gerrard, Precarious Freedom: Crowds, Flags, Barriers © The Artist. Photography: Ros Kavanagh
The John RichardsonFrench Residency Award 2024
Pleased to announce that I have been shortlisted for the The John Richardson French Residency Award 2024, In association with Le Centre Culturel and Eamon Colman, Irish Artist & Hambley and Hambley
From hundreds of international applicants, 25 finalists were selected, A highly esteemed panel of judges will now announce the the winning artists at the launch event on March 3rd. This year’s gallery funded residency will take place from 19th June - 2nd July in Dampierre Sur Boutonne.
Russborough Car Boot Art Fair 2023
Car Boot Art Fair 2023
Date: 17 Sep, 2023
Sunday 17th September 11am to 4pm
I’m taking part in this years Russborough Car Boot Fair with many of Ireland's leading artists.
The Car boot Art Fair at Russborough brings together the best of Ireland’s Contemporary artists for this unique event. Part art fair, part carboot sale, this year’s participants include Mick O’Dea PPRHA, Una Sealy, Gabhann Dunne, Ann Quinn and Alan Phelan with Cecelia Bullo and Stephen Murphy.
In all, over 40 artists will arrive for the day to sell original works and meet the public in the spectacular setting of Russborough House. With full price tickets just €10 and children going free, this is a cost-of-living crisis beating event for the art collecting connoisseur.
I have created a collection of Mini’s and works on paper especially for the event.
'NO FILTER' A Joint Exhibition
NO FILTER
Discussing the work of two artists in one text generates its own particular challenges. Making comparisons and identifying points of contrast is inevitable but sometimes these can seem arbitrary: the artists might have nothing in common, other than appearing in the same show in the same gallery at the same time; they might be working in different media or cities or periods in history. However, when I consider the subjects of this text – painters Esther O’Kelly and NOTPOP (aka Matthew Knight and family) – their pairing in this show seems predestined, with nothing left to chance. The story goes that both artists (represented by Canvas) repeatedly found themselves appearing side-by-side at various shows. They have theories about why this happened: ‘We’re the colourful ones’ NOTPOP tells me; ‘we’re the two bold children’ adds Esther. Introductions followed and after a day and night of knocking about, ‘yapping away with no subject off limits’ (drink might have been taken) the two recognised even more of themselves in each other, beyond colour and boldness that is. ‘It’s me but not me’ O’Kelly reflects. A pact was made: they decided to embrace circumstance and mount a show together. Six months later, ‘No Filter’ (Canvas Galleries, 25 May to 3rd June 2023) is the result.
Some general reflections by way of introduction. Although NOTPOP later discloses that his recent use of neon pink (in Let’s Really Have Some Fun) felt brave and out of character, it is obvious that neither artist is afraid to employ a wide colour palette. Obviously though, it goes much deeper than that: there is an intelligence and sensitivity in that use of colour. Many of O’Kelly’s works vibrate with a palette of bright shimmering warm tones next to deep blues and blacks, yet also feature subtle off-white hues of cream and grey next to pure whites. I’m reminded of Mondrian’s subtle use of whites next to off-white gradations of grey and blue in his early 1920s compositions. With the Dutch master, it seemed to operate subconsciously, bringing about a sense of harmony and balance in some works, and of movement in others. I seem to remember an experiment some years back where, more often than not, viewers of Mondrian works instinctively knew when they had been deliberately turned sideways or upside-down (I search in vain for the source of this study but it has been lost in a flood of news items to do with a recent discovery of a Mondrian hanging upside down for 75 years in a German museum before anyone noticing – I suppose the point is that eventually someone did notice!). Incidentally, I have a similar experience with one of NOTPOP’s pieces (Transition): I flip it over but it seems wrong (or at least it changes what I wanted to write about it so I quickly flip it back again!). However, returning to that use of colour, equally, alongside the neons, many of NOTPOP’s paintings feature subtle gradients and gradual, almost imperceptible shifts in colour as forms run from left to right or top to bottom or overlap. As I examine each artist’s work, more shared affinities become apparent – a layering, a jostling between planes, and a sense that the more one looks, the more one sees.
O’Kelly’s largescale canvases feel like landscapes: even if almost nothing is represented literally; even if many of the colours employed are non-naturalistic; and even if the majority are portrait in orientation, they still achieve the remarkable feat of communicating as landscapes to the viewer. Seemingly, there is enough in every painting to make it feel like a landscape: in several a swathe of white reads as a horizon; in others a diorama-like succession of overlapping planes suggests depth, hidden valleys and ridges; broader areas of textured and layered paint, that suggest mountains or sky, sit next to busier more detailed patches which can read as rock formations or forests perhaps or eroded furrows in the earth. Comets and Contortions is one such landscape. The horizon rises abruptly on the left – to anyone living in the shadow of Belfast’s Cave Hill, it is reminiscent of McArt’s Fort – before shifting to a gentler angle and culminating in a sort of plateau that trails off the right of the canvas. The contours of the landscape below echo this line for a time before taking on their own distinct character of a tumbling, hacked-out glacial landscape of warmer tones. I use the word ‘contour’ also in its cartographic sense i.e. a line joining points of equal elevation, as I sometimes think of Esther’s paintings as aerial views. More on this below. As with all of her works, there is much adding and layering of paint, but also much scraping away and removing with knives, spatulas and potter’s tools, a repeated play of revealing, then obfuscating again. The paintings move towards you and away from you, visually but also temporally. The evolution that takes place on the canvas is left pretty much intact for you to see its making. However, the process is not linear; it is often difficult to tell in what order the layers of paint have been applied. If you think you have figured it out, an exception will throw you. In many of her works there is a reining in at the end, a sense on the part of the artist of knowing when something is sufficient and balanced. In Comets and Contortions this takes place across the upper area of the canvas, when a ‘horizon’ is formed by the addition of impastoed strokes that act to contain the action happening underneath. But even then, there is more to see – that richness still shimmers below, gone but not forgotten.
You always feel somehow how close or distant you are from O’Kelly’s landscapes, what kind of prospect the window of the canvas is offering. Far Away the Hills Are Greener, for example, feels more zoomed-in, more imposing, its verticality more strident, the horizon shooting up to the right – like the Matterhorn in Doig’s Alpinist – and vertically out of frame. A larger section of blue in the upper right, scraped or wiped back in repeated knife passes and emphasising the weave of the canvas, is reminiscent of the rock formation known as ‘The Organ’ at the Giant’s Casuseway (incidentally, NOTPOP made several pieces in 2021 inspired by the same basalt columns on Ireland’s north coast). Throughout O’Kelly’s canvases, this knifework provides a rhythmic vertical dynamism. The marks, reminiscent of Cézanne’s treatment of foliage, are always vertical or just-off vertical, at most a 45° angle. Even Above the Road, one of the few landscape-format paintings, is defined by its verticals. Again, one can see the work being worked out on the canvas, intuitively one assumes, until the artist instinctively knows the work is complete.
In Everything Changes, the section where one might have come to expect a bright horizon is plunged into darkness, yet somehow it does not read like a night sky. I have the impression here that I am looking at an aerial photograph. Over the black a deep-blue layer of acrylic paint has been applied then ploughed through with some implement, like a notched tiling trowel one imagines. The effect is repeated just below, where a creamy salmon is scraped away to reveal watery blues, and the sensation is of waves lapping against a coastline. Starless Rivers seems to combine both prospect view and aerial view, the overlapping reds and gold of the background reading as distant hills, beyond which the sun is rising, the Y formation of the more detailed lower half like looking down on the meeting of two of the titular rivers. Here the revealing of the lower levels of paint through the upper is more scratched than wiped, like sgraffito.
Gone Astray’s landscape sweeps upwards like some vast tidal wave before reaching a clay-like neutral. It is enveloping but not threatening and I wonder why that is. Is the studio or gallery affording the ‘refuge’ aspect of prospect-refuge theory, gazing out over the prospect of Esther’s ‘remembered landscapes’, or is it that they are simply beautiful to run one’s eye over. When I ask about the verticality of the works, O’Kelly tells me that ‘you move through a landscape in that way if you’re a culchie, you’re hurrying through it, not dwelling’. I recognise that kind of tunnel vision one experiences while hiking, always looking for the path forward, however, I certainly do want to dwell in ‘Estherland’.
An initial, superficial glance at NOTPOP’s work in ‘No Filter’ makes me think of the world of street art and tagging. However, to anyone reading who thinks the (admittedly catch-all) term is in any way derogatory perhaps has not witnessed the staggering levels of accomplishment and diversity this artform has achieved in recent years, not least in Belfast. There is a linear, angular, typographic quality to the pieces that use a vocabulary of outlines, overlaps and drop shadows – but it’s one which is extraordinarily refined. It is as if NOTPOP has lifted Roy Lichtenstein’s zig-zag Pop Art brushstrokes, already stylised versions of the real thing, and taken that process of refinement as far as it can go: distilling them to their essentials yet somehow making them more complex. My flight of fancy seems to echo the words I later come across from NOTPOP: ‘a quick doodle turns into a more intricate piece of work with bold colour choices’. And although the artist’s stated aim is to ‘to make a body of work that fits somewhere between Pop Art and Abstract’, that is the last Pop Art reference I’ll make in regard to someone calling themselves NOTPOP!
NOTPOP seems, among other things, to have come from a street art background. I’m not as familiar with his earlier work, but in conversation he refers to work from the past as ‘stuff he used to just splurge on the wall’ or ‘not something he saw that people could relate to’. Now he says things are ‘more structured’. I suspect he is being overly self-critical (artists are good at that) but he seems nevertheless confident and content about his current work – and so he should be. The second thing you notice, when viewing several of NOTPOP’s pieces in the same room, is the framing. Highly irregularly-shaped pieces have similarly irregular, angular, tray frames that follow most of the angles and turns of the pieces they contain. At least that is my initial assumption, but as soon as I take a closer look at works like Ripple Effect, Watching Every Motion or Transition I realise the frames and the works are not two separate entities – they are, in fact, integral. Apart from a shift in colour, it is not possible to see exactly where work ends and frame begins; for the most part, they are one and the same. Before getting into details, as a side note, I have to say that every time I attempt to describe what is going on in NOTPOP’s pieces by using any kind of shorthand descriptive terms, the works throw me – they elude simplification and really have to be seen in person. With that in mind, I shall try to describe what is going on in Ripple Effect. Two offset M-shaped zig-zags span this landscape-format work. The lower-level one, which reads as being closer to us, is teal, while the one ‘behind’ it is turquoise. It is as if they are both sheets of Perspex, laid one on top of the other, and where they overlap the combined teal and turquoise produce something approaching a celadon blue. So far so good, but there is more. As these serrated lines move from left to the right, they shift in tone in three or four steps: the teal gradually lightening to approach aqua, while the turquoise approaches a pastel green or mint. Even the overlapping areas lighten accordingly but my colour vocabulary fails me here. NOTPOP confirms that some of the working out of composition and colours is done digitally, in advance, but he leaves room for changes as the works progress. Suffice to say, these are obviously meticulously planned and carefully executed works – and at this point, I have only discussed colour! In terms of physical structure, there are subtle elements in the cut shapes of these works – some of the upper lines hint at a 2.5D effect applied to the lower ‘M’, the angle of which could easily have intersected with the descending lines of the rear ‘M’, but they don’t – NOTPOP giving himself a few more tiny notches to carefully cut around. These are details I only notice on closer observation – I suspect for many the overall effect will be of dynamism, a feeling of movement operating subconsciously, without our realising. I find myself thinking again of Mondrian’s early regular-grid works like Composition with Grid 9 or Lozenge with Grey Lines (both 1918) in which subtle changes in line width or shades of grey operate to create a shimmering effect.
Watching Every Motion is, in contrast, portrait in orientation, yet has a similar suggestion of overlapping zigzagging lines. Here however, there seem to be more lines, they are more compressed, the overlapping more complex, and the level of offset increasing in small increments. I struggle to describe this piece in more detail than that without tying myself in knots! A section in the middle calls to mind Bridget Riley post-1986 works (after her introduction of the diagonal line) like High Sky (1991) or Nataraja (1993). NOTPOP’s pieces have a high degree of finish but in many the brushstroke has not yet been smoothed out of existence – they are still very much paintings. And despite their deceptive complexity, they are not academic – they are very beautiful and desirable and fun!
Viewing Transition is like gazing out over a computer game landscape of winding paths, pitfalls and platforms that seems to recede towards a horizon of sorts while The Wiggle seems to be a step in a new direction. In the latter work, not only is the overlapping of Z forms suggested in paint but also rendered in real life. The Zs are cut from thin wood and stacked, offset from each other. I cannot decide if the painted overlaps are working with or against the actual overlaps but some kind of contradiction or complement is at play. Even the visible grain of each cut wood element seems to alternate at right angles to the layer preceding it. There is a subtle gradient that moves from a turquoise to Naples yellow – a beautifully-rendered transition which is allegedly inspired by the sunsets seen from NOTPOP’s workshop in Tyrone. On this theme of landscape, I ask about what I refer to above as a kind of horizon in Transition, and apparently that too is an oblique reference to a blue sky and an echo of how O’Kelly employs horizons.
It would seem that working over the six months together on this show, ‘watching what each other was doing’, has introduced a certain degree of cross-pollination: visually, as in the case of the NOTPOP works just described, but also temperamentally. Following a recent studio move and the inevitable interruption this brings to one’s practice, the prospect of a joint show gave Esther a focus, a push and an excuse to ‘explore her wackier side’ and ‘find the joy in it again’. NOTPOP says he was influenced by Esther’s use of multiple colours in a single piece.
And so we have ‘No Filter’: a lack of inhibitions, a directness, a social media hashtag, a chance meeting of minds, and an ironic title in that if landscape is an influence (it certainly is in Esther’s work and is perhaps creeping more so into NOTPOP’s works) the work could not be more filtered through the very individual approaches and processes of these two singular artists.
Jonathan Brennan. May 2023.
See collection here:
Exhibition Location:
617 Lisburn Road
Belfast
BT9 7GT
Tel: 028 9022 2727
Email: sales@canvasgalleries.com
Canvas Gallery at The Dead Rabbit NYC
Canvas have long been advocates for contemporary Irish art since launching in 2008, which is a shared passion between their team and The Dead Rabbit. Esther is one of 8 gallery artists delighted to be taking part in what promises to be an exciting collaboration featuring new and exclusive works from a stellar line up of talent based in Ireland.
This connection has evolved into a collection of artworks to represent modern Ireland in the heart of New York City.
Pictured is Esther’s works ‘Sea Wall’ and ‘Wolf Moon’ just some of the incredible pieces on show in the Wall Street Premises. All enquiries to sales@canvasgalleries.com
'The Point of Perspective', Fort Dunree
126 Artist-run Gallery & Studios & Artlink hosts 'The Point of Perspective', curated by the 126 board of directors, which takes place from 30 July - 28th August 2022.
The artist is encouraged through the process of art making to reach the highest point of perspective, allowing the process to take them on a journey, carrying them to the the most prosperous point of realisation, a point of view reflecting a place of revelation.
Donegal is an emotional landscape of mountainous peaks, the highest trails, and Ireland's highest point of landscape perspective. An idyllic setting to reach the furthest point of perspective through the process of art.
Is the view from the final point as satisfying as it is telling? What can this teach us of the artistic point of perspective and of single and multiple points along the way? A metaphoric experiment of reason.
Through an open call, artists were invited to submit work in which they have achieved through the process of art making, a place of higher perspective. The exhibition is interested in the perspective of the other, allowing an attainment of points of view to culminate in the form of a group show.
126 Gallery Board are Meabh Noonan, Mary McGraw, Liz Curran, Lindsay Merlihan and Sona Smedkova
‘Space For The Birds’ 40x40cm Original painting on Canvas by Esther O’Kelly
Slavka Sverakova Review 'Host'
Esther O'Kelly exhibits eight paintings, acrylic on canvas that share the same title Photosphene and a number 1-8. Four large ones share the diameter of 60 cm, one a little smaller of 50cm diameter, and three smaller ones, 30cm, 33cm and 36cm. A rondel has an interupted history, in rich appearances in Hellenistic art, Renaissance and 20th C, with large gaps where it is absent, and shifts to the privacy of small scale embroidery, tapestry. O'Kelly is thus reviving it for modern vitalism of wild colour contrasts and undescribed motives. According to the curator of HOST, Moran Been-noon, they are "expressions of a journey into childhood" via "memories, a version of reality that we harbour within, shards of light that pierce through otherwise a misty perception of why and how we understood the world around us and of our place within it now." I admit being overwhelmed by those words, applicable to so much, that escapes definition. My take is to answer a question concerning what is visible. The rondel itself has a history, as I mention above and in poetry and music(there it spells "rondo" and follows patterns of repetition). In these paintings the circular form has another meaning: that of repeat of similarity and difference of direction. Turning a rondel leads to another variant of the rhythm and space thus influencing the meaning. I sense every one of them houses a number of variants, like a musical equivalent of rondel referred to as rondo. O'Kelly offers multiples in one circular form based on her mastering untidy plurality of hues and tones to feed the viewer's imagination. They are like the universe, not fully understandable but powerfully present.
Image Credit: Tim Millen
For the full article please follow this link: https://slavkasverakova.blogspot.com/2021/11/host-8-artists-vault-studios-cantine.html
'Phosphene Constellation' part of 'Host' Exhibition Exchange
Colours and light appear to me when my eyes are closed, revealing moments that only I will ever see, in a phenomenon called phosphene which is generated by our visual system, the eyes and brains, that continue generating images when denied light. Like a camera set to record with the lens cap on.
When I experience these moments, the present blends with the past making a bridge between knowledge and emotion. Through the specks of coloured light these images are lost and found while at the same time creating a way to remember the fluidity of experience.
My mind sees connections in the fragments drifting in front of my eyes it holds the truth of my aloneness reminding me that we are carriers of the companions of our past, driven by repetition and circular activity.
Woods And Water
‘Woods And Water’ Triptych. 2100mm x 3600mm Acrylic On Canvas ©2021
This signature piece was commissioned by Haller Clarke on behalf of Bywater Properties. Installed at 35DP Belfast. Read the interview here.
A Belfast landscape inspired by the hidden history below our feet. The 3 rivers that still flow far below the city’s pavements, surrounded by high hills and ancient woods. Exploring emotion & intuitions, the painting is built with layers like stratified history, each stroke a different place discovered and uncovered.
A sense of belonging and meaning are explored. Time collides in the past, present and future, all running alongside. I feel joy and wisdom in these stories. The poetic presence of the literary and mythological. The ideas that take root and flourish in the imagination. By travelling within this inner space I return to the roots of this city, expressed without objects and clutter - just joy and the landscape.
Host. 8 Artists. 2 Cities. 1 Theme
Eight artists, four Dublin-based and four Belfast-based, came together to create two exhibitions; one hosted in Dublin and the other in Belfast. Starting from a single sentiment: “host”, each artist travelled a distance into their own narrative world, using the group prompt as a conceptual and methodical challenge. The work in the exhibition includes meditations on our relationships with the natural world, with places and traditions, with architecture, with each other, and with our own thoughts and emotions.
Telling the story of Host starts from the artists who explore the term’s expressions out in the world. Tim Millen’s series of oil paintings explores the recursive relationship between humans and the natural world, relating to the biological meaning of hosting – an organism that harbours something and a parasitic organism. Taking the human element further into socialised relationships, Alana Barton’s mixed media painting installation invites us step into a childhood moment and join the playdate in her painting, composed in manner paying tribute to renaissance painted scenes. Millen and Barton both took the idea of the containing-contained relationship model to portray the implicitly unbalanced system of social behaviours in human connections and between humans and other organic beings.
Jonathan Brennan’s project is rooted in his relationship with the building that harbours his artist studio. Vault Studios in Belfast is located in a re-used building, the location’s past giving it a real sense of place rather than a blank site to work with. Brennan’s collection of photos found in the space were an attempt to resolve the link between the place’s past, which is the host of his present at the studio. The past held on to its secrets and the place remained unresolved, an outcome that’s expressed through Brennan’s multi-angled consideration of the architecture’s form, material, and content.
Exploring possibilities of understanding place in contemporary political context is Margot Galvin. Her pieces are abstractions of mappings and landscapes, sending us on an impossible journey through the gallery in the attempt to resolve the location portrayed in the art. Galvin created this work with the thought of countries hosting those whose place becomes impossible to depend on, thinking of the difficulty of anchoring their identity and selfhood without a context of where they belong. Daniel Henson’s paintings are abstracted reflections on the link between the sense of belonging and the right to be a host. Through his practice, Henson examines his emotional responses to his own foreignness and his uncertainty when being counted as ‘part of’
in Ireland.
Taking our story to a geographically remote context, Mary O’Connor reminisces about the hospitality of Central Asian cultures, where she lived and was hosted in peoples’ homes. Piles of paintings in towering stacks represent the elaborately beautiful weaving and embroidered tapestries that shift the household spaces’ functionality, stacked by the women of the house during the day, spread for sleeping at night. O’Connor’s project includes the performative act of piling, accompanying the assembled paintings. The labour of maintaining a household as a space that harbours the family is in the root of Monika Crowley’s series of prints. Rather than the physical labour, this piece’s focus is with the emotional labour of parenting, and in particular motherhood. Re-enacting the repetitious gestures that fill a mother’s day, Crowley regarded the printing process as a durational performance, showcasing her prints as a thoughtful outcome.
Finally, the story of Host takes us deeper into ourselves with Esther O’Kelly’s constellation of paintings. The pieces are formal expressions of a journey into childhood, which O’Kelly considers to be a private-but-communal story. The narrative is that of the memories, a version of a reality that we harbour within, shards of lights that pierce through otherwise a misty perception of why, and how we understood the world around us and of our place within it now.
Words by Moran Been-noon
Follow HOST Exhibition at @host.8 on Instagram
HOST Exhibition Exchange
Eight artists across two cities interrogate one theme
The Dean Arts Studios, Dublin 2nd – 9th October 2021
The Vaults Artists’ Studio, Belfast 14th – 24th October 2021
《…流》（Streams of…） 迈克尔·麦克沃伊（Michael McEvoy）、埃丝特·奥凯莉（Esther O’Kelly）
Pleased to announce that our Match Make collaboration with Maiden Voyage dance has been chosen to be part of the British Council’s #ReConnect – 2021 UK China Contemporary Culture festival
The festival will run from 1st to 30th September and will offer audiences in China the opportunity to #Reconnect with art and culture from Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England.
Match Make is eight short films by Northern Irish based Dance Artists and their collaborators. It was created in response to the artist’s changing relationship to their internal and external environments during the first pandemic lockdown in 2020 and includes natural, industrial, rural, urban and coastal settings.
This is the first time all eight films have been screened together.
Watch Match Make and the other festival events at http://reconnect.britishcouncil.cn/
Streams of can be viewed from 20.58 seconds here http://reconnect.britishcouncil.cn/activity/match-make/
‘Streams of...’ is a short film made during lockdown with support from @maidenvoyageni @artsni_ in collaboration with @michael_mce
Filmed in June 2020 after 12 weeks of lockdown we took the opportunity to respond to the landscape in an experimental, improvised and physically distanced way.
Maiden Voyage are principally funded by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and supported by Belfast City Council.
At Home: The Artist Home
Today we visit Esther O'Kelly at home in Belfast. Originally from Wexford, Esther is a visual artist and a founding member of Vault Artist Studios, a community of over a hundred practitioners working across a range of disciplines. READ ARTICLE
World Of Interiors April 2021
ARTIST OF THE MONTH – SEPTEMBER 2020 WINNERS
Delighted to be named as one of Its Liquid Magazine artist of the month for September 2020.
Luca Curci – What is art for you?
Esther O’Kelly – Art is life, It’s everything, I see it as fundamental to the human experience. Art helps us form an understanding of the world around us, it helps us process our experiences and connects us with others.
LC – What are you currently working on?
EOK – I have been working outside the studio and experimenting with being more immersive in the landscape by actively engaging with the notion and experience of the journey. Making work based on how I experience time, place, and space. How I experience the transient, the impermanent and the romantic all in a more connected way. Being in the landscape is a big part in making the work more relevant for me bringing a balance between being mindful and being mindless. I would like to make work that records the wisdom and bleakness held in the vastness of the landscape as it consumes and intoxicates generations of humans on their journey
LC – What is the most challenging part about creating your artworks?
EOK – The most challenging part about making work is getting the time and resources to make the work. As a self reliant full time artist and carer you feel the pressure to justify the time spent on your practice, so it can be difficult to dedicate research and development time to enhance your career with research trips and residencies. I have worked hard however to improve my creative network and relationships with mentors which has helped me gain perceptive on my career and my work which I am very grateful for.
LC – What is your creative process like?
EOK – I make my paintings in Vault Artist Studio’s in Belfast. They are mostly large format acrylic paint applied with thick brushes. An experimental and intuitive approach is at the core of my work. Works are produced in a spontaneous manner drawing upon the unconscious as source material. I work into the painting using wide blades that remove layers of paint while simultaneously creating scratch marks. I like this visceral approach to the medium, quite often it is what I remove from the canvas rather than what is added that creates the focal point of the work.
LC – Are your artworks focused on a specific theme?
EOK – My paintings are an evocation of my relationship with home; memories, landscape and heritage. I paint from memories and remembered experience, drawing narratives from personal and cultural memory, an active engagement with the idea of place. I am inspired by how we form an understanding of our surroundings, how the chaos of this world can turn into an abstract expression where personal experience overflows. Our mental maps are skewed by whatever is meaningful to us, it’s a visceral, fundamental human thing, My everyday experience goes into making a painting, recurring ideas that take root and flourish in the imagination, gateways into feelings and stories known or imagined. By travelling with the inner landscape I can encode a map that’s constantly being influenced with what is meaningful.
LC – How is being an artist nowadays?
EOK – I love being an artist, I feel very privileged to be able to practice my art. We play a diverse and necessary part in contributing to the overall health, development, and well-being of our society. Artist provide our communities with joy, and inspiration, enabling steps toward meaningful social progress. But right at the moment it’s tough for many of us particularly the performing artists. I’m hopeful for the future though, we always find a means and a way, that’s our thing and we’ll keep doing it.
Full interview here
Match Make is a Maiden Voyage commissioning initiative that brought dance artists and artistic collaborators together to work apart on short commissions during lockdown.
Match Makers Film in collaboration with Maiden Voyage
Streams of… captures dance artist Michael McEvoy and visual artist Esther O’Kelly responding to the location of Donaghadee Lighthouse in their own creative ways. Filmed in June 2020 after 12 weeks of lockdown they took the opportunity to create in an experimental, improvised and physically distanced way reacting to each other and the landscape spontaneously.
Streams of… can be veiwed here:
Michael McEvoy is a recent graduate from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance with a First Class Honours degree in Contemporary Dance. Michael has returned home and has ambitions to join a professional company. His Match Make collaboration Streams of.. with Esther O’Kelly is his first time working with Maiden Voyage. Michael is also co producer and choreographer of a Belfast based youth musical theatre company MMK Productions.
Esther O’Kelly BDES, BA, graduated from The National College of Art and Design in Dublin with an honours degree in Visual Communication. Esther is currently Vice Chair at Vault Artist Studio Belfast. Esther paints remembered journey’s through the Irish landscape, drawing narratives from personal and cultural memory, an active engagement with the idea of landscape, a journey with no departure or arrival point. Esther is inspired by how we form an understanding of our surroundings, how the chaos of this world can turn into an abstract expression where personal experience overflows. www.estherokelly.com
Maiden Voyage are principally funded by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and supported by Belfast City Council.
‘Streams of...’ is a short film made during lockdown with support from @maidenvoyageni @artsni_ in collaboration with @michael_mce
https://maidenvoyagedance.com/match-make-streams-off/
Interview with a Vaulter
Hows it going Esther?
All good. I’ve been home schooling which provides structure and cooking three meals a day which provides the need for frequent exercise.
What is your living situation? Do you have outside space or are you living in an underground bunker?
I live in Sunny East Belfast in a 1920’s semi with my family. We have food, shelter, great neighbours and a big garden where we grow things and watch the birds bicker and bathe.
How has the pandemic effected your arts practice?
I can’t go to my studio, which was a huge shock at first. Not having that dedicated space to indulge my creativity is a massive blow.
At the beginning of March I began work on a studio refit to help upscale my practice and output. But Instead I’m back home where I started with my sketch books and paintbox, pawing the dog eared covers of exhibition guides and art books.
It’s tempting right now to question one’s career and to feel uncertain, especially when your professional skills don’t fall under the ‘Key Workers’ category. Despite this I’ve taken the time to appreciate what I have, to reflect and set new goals.
How are you coping with the temporary closing of the Vault?
I miss the chance encounters with creative people, the water cooler moment and coffee encounters, every day is different at Vault, they have the potential of taking very interesting twists and turns, some rabbit holes proving more fruitful than others.
Most of all I miss the unpredictable environment where there is no normal, it makes you resilient and adaptable which can be a useful skill in these weird times.
What do you appreciate during lockdown?
Community, family and creativity, but mostly I appreciate the time to pause and re-evaluate the important things in life.
How do you imagine the future after lockdown? For yourself and the wider art world in general.
Artists always find a means and a way, that’s our thing and we’ll keep doing it. However I fear that after the great ‘Lock In’ some of us will no longer be artists. The sector was already experiencing huge blows before Covid-19.
Each artist plays a diverse and necessary part in contributing to the overall health, development, and well-being of our society. Artist provide our communities with joy, and inspiration, enabling steps toward meaningful social progress.
So I imagine a future where artists can thrive and where the provision of the arts within Northern Ireland are valued and respected.
Where can people find you online?
@estherokelly
Vault Trustees Research trip, to Artist led studios in Amsterdam.
Four days of researching artist led spaces and broedplaatsen in Amsterdam with the Vault team. Inspiring to see what had been achieved and how organisations have sustained themselves.
Team photo from Vault Artist Studios trip to Amsterdam. Over 5 days we visited 6 arts and creative organisations. Behind us you can see our boat, Lotus, where we stayed for the duration of our trip. Image by Neal Campbell
Murder on the Gdańsk Floor
10 Artists and a Dog
In December 2019, I was one of five Irish artists (Jonathan Brennan, Joanna Mules, Marcus Patton and Katherine St Angelo - see below) invited to attend an international artist residence and exchange with three Polish counterparts in the historic city of Gdańsk.
The residency took place in Dom Aktora, a former actors’ residence in the old city, with over 30 years experience of organising artist exchanges. Professor Jacek Krenz (architect of the Monument to the Fallen Workers and the Cemetery of Lost Cemeteries), Professor Krzysztof Ludwin (Politechnika Krakowska), Anna Schumacher (Krakow) and Magdalena Nowacka (Katowice) formed the Polish contingent with whom we shared a living and working space for a week, creating new works of art inspired by Gdańsk and Sopot. All pieces were exhibited in a well-attended public exhibition at the close of the week.
Although Dom Aktora had organised similar exchanges with Armenia, Italy, etc. this was the first time that a Belfast-Gdansk exchange had taken place. The twinning of both cities in this way seemed right: we learned of our many commonalities, not least sharing a shipbuilding heritage and a troubled past, but also saw opportunities to learn from each other going forward e.g. Gdansk’s exemplary way of dealing with its recent history in the form of the Solidarity Museum vs. Belfast’s thriving, albeit underfunded, contemporary art scene.
Ireland
Jonathan Brennan - https://www.jonathanbrennanart.com
Joanna Mules - http://www.joannamules.com
Esther O’Kelly - https://estherokelly.com
Marcus Patton - https://www.bpw.org.uk/content/marcus-patton
Katherine St Angelo - http://www.katherinestangelo.com
Poland
Jacek Krenz - http://watermarks.weebly.com/ and http://www.pg.gda.pl/~jkrenz/index-gb.html
Krzysztof Ludwin - http://ludwin.pl
Magdalena Nowacka - https://nowackakolano.com
Anna Schumacher - http://www.annaschumacher-malarstwo.pl
Amber City EOK