Sparking Thoughts Podcast

Clodagh Boyce speaks with Artists Mary Burke and Róisín White about their exhibitions in dlr LexIcon, Dún Laoghaire, on show till January 19 2025.

Moments of Domesticity is a series of paintings of homes in the County. Mary embarked on a series of house visits that took her to Dundrum, Leopardstown, Dún Laoghaire, Dalkey, Ballybrack, Monkstown, Deansgrange and Ballycorus. She spent the following year painting these homes in her studio at the dlr Baths Artist Studios. 

Safe Harbour is an exhibition of work in progress. It explores our relationship with the sea as a place of leisure and play and the sea’s power, strength and unpredictable nature. Róisín creates sculptural forms and imagery that engage with our experiences and memories of Dún Laoghaire Bay. 

Clodagh Boyce is a Trini-Irish sculptor and curator whose work explores ideas of memory, race, nationhood and legacy. Drawing inspiration from their background in community organising and queer photography in NYC, Clodagh’s art focuses on collective resistance and the reclamation of identity and home. 

Mary Burke is a painter who graduated with BA degree in Fine Art from NCAD in 1982. She also has MA degrees in Anthropology and Digital Media Technologies

She has exhibited extensively, and she has undertaken residencies at the Leighton Artists Colony at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada and at the Vermont Studio Center, USA. She has received several awards including three bursaries from the Arts Council of Ireland, a United States Information Agency Fellowship, a bursary from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation (Montreal), and a Golden Fleece Merit Award from the Lillias Mitchell Trust. Her work is included in many public and corporate collections including The Arts Council, AIB International Financial Services Centre, Eircom, Dublin Airport Authority, Aer Motive Ireland, South Dublin County Council, Fingal County Council, Laois County Council and the Office of Public Works. Her last solo exhibition At Home on the Farm was exhibited at the Limerick City Gallery of Art in 2021. 

Róisín White is a visual artist and arts facilitator based in Ireland. She primarily works with photography, with diverse interests in mixed media sculpture. Her work often stems from found and archival materials, with an interest in storytelling, both historical and imagined.

Róisín has worked with children and young people within her visual arts practice for over 10 years, working both collaboratively, and in a facilitation role. She is inspired by the sense of play and curiosity that young people show while making art, and strives to create an environment that gives young people the space and confidence to try things out and be led by their own interests. Recent youth engagement projects have included working with Photo Museum Ireland, PhotoIreland, The Ark Children’s Cultural Centre, Cow House Studios, and Landskrona Foto in Sweden.

She has exhibited her work extensively across Ireland and Europe, with solo exhibitions in The Library Project and Pallas Projects. Her photobook "Lay Her Down Upon Her Back" was published by Landskrona Breadfield (Sweden) and Witty Books (Italy) in 2023 and was nominated for the Prix Du Livre D’auteur at Rencontres Arles Photo Festival and Photobook of the Year at Photo Espana in 2024.

Her work in Ireland has kindly been supported by The Arts Council, the Dublin City Arts Office, and the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council. She is currently the artist in residence at The Baths Studios in Dún Laoghaire from 2023 – 2025.

Sculptor and curator Clodagh Boyce talks to Artist Joanna Hopkins about her exhibition Fruity Bodies.

Clodagh Boyce is a Trini-Irish sculptor and curator whose work explores ideas of memory, race, nationhood and legacy. Drawing inspiration from their background in community organising and queer photography in NYC,  Clodagh’s art focuses on collective resistance and the reclamation of identity and home.

Joanna Hopkins is a visual artist using research, video, photography & installation, with both a studio based and collaborative practice. Recent solo exhibitions include GOMA Waterford 2023; Sympathetic Soup, Dublin City University 2021. Recent Awards include The Soil Project commissioned artist with the Butler Gallery Kilkenny 2024; Create Artist in The Community Project Realisation Award 2024, Arts Council Visual Artist Bursary Award 2023; Platform 31 Selected Artist 2022. Residencies include Interface Inagh, 2025; Dublin City University Artist in Residence 20220-2021; and Bealtine Artist in Residence in a Healthcare Setting, 2017. Public Art commissions include An Urgent Enquiry, collaborating with Mary Conroy, Fingal County Council, 2019.

www.joannahopkins.com

About the exhibition

Fruity Bodies was on at the Municipal Gallery, dlr LexIcon from 10 March to 3 May 2024. The work explored folklore with landscape and the human form.

In her work, Hopkins focuses on the female body, menstruation and native plants. She uses plants and plant dyes from her local hedgerows and fields in a wide range of media including sculpture, embroidery, photography and film. She makes abstract connections in her artworks between humans and nonhuman entities inspired by her local natural environment.

Diana Bamimeke discusses Landscapes and Oddities, the recent exhibition in dlr Municipal Gallery, with Artist Dave Madigan.

Resources used in this episode:

Chaos theory - https://www.britannica.com/science/chaos-theory 

Understanding the butterfly effect - https://link-gale-com.ucd.idm.oclc.org/apps/doc/A492222241/ITOF?u=dublin&sid=summon&xid=5e358095 

Hina Khan's Biography

“Born in Pakistan in 1980, I completed my MFA with majors in Miniature Painting from Pakistan. I use a mixture of traditional and innovative techniques in Miniatures. With my work, I portray social issues, immigration, humanitarian crises like prostitution, gender discrimination, gender restrictions, trauma, child abuse & killing etc. I have chosen Miniature because of its intricacy and delicacy of brush work which tends to allow the artwork to have a unique identity. Most of my work is a mixture of traditional and contemporary miniature. My art represents the constant search for the best way to interpret the ideas that express my own ideologies through symbolism. In recent years I have shifted my practice from miniature to drawing-centred installation, videos, and three-dimensional work. 

I create a dialogue through my art. My art reflects inner connection, immigrants, nomadic artists are part of this land, migration is deeply rooted in my blood. I have carried two cultures, one of where I was born, and another is this culture where I am trying to re-root myself. Sometimes the situation is not in our control, but life always takes us to different voyages. This journey built up constant transition in my art- with my personality and experimentation allow me to evolve my art practice.

Between 2002 and 2011, I have participated in a number of group shows in Pakistan. 

I came to Ireland in 2015 and participated in a number of exhibitions in Dublin, Co. Laois, Co. Mayo, and Co. Cork. I have been awarded several residencies with Facebook {META} 2023, Fire Station Artists studios’, Create Ireland, West Cork Art Centre, and Cow House Studios. I have displayed my solo exhibition at Ballina Art Centre in County Mayo, and Stradbally Art House. My 2nd solo exhibition took place in cork LHQ gallery. My work was also in included in Echo Festival in IMMA.  I am the recipient of several Awards from Arts Council Ireland, Create Ireland, as well as grants and bursaries from various counties’ arts offices. My work can be found in the permanent collection of Arts Council Ireland.”

Diana Bamimeke discusses Heirloom, the recent exhibition in dlr Municipal Gallery, with Artist Rachel Doolin.

Resources used in this episode:

● www.racheldoolin.com

● La Via Campesina

● Catherine Phillips, Saving More Than Seeds: Practices and Politics of Seed Saving
(2013). Taylor & Francis Group.

● Ian Buchanan, A Dictionary of Critical Theory, (2018). Oxford University Press.

● Andrew Patrizio, The Ecological Eye: assembling an ecocritical art history (2019).
Manchester University Press.
 

Diana Bamimeke is an independent curator, art writer and maker, primarily interested in curating and producing socially engaged art. Their guiding principle, across all strands of their practice, is working collaboratively and responsively, and they are most at home working in tandem with fellow arts workers. This principle has been realised in outcomes both in and out of the gallery and museum, most notably in the 2021 exhibition On Belonging, in conjunction with Basic Space Dublin. They are most drawn to themes of Black and queer radicality, total abjection, fiction and speculation, critical conjecture, and DIY making. In 2022, they completed a BA in Humanities at UCD, in Classics, Art History and Archaeology, and their current research interest for their art-writing, is in critico-fiction, an emergent literary genre blending art response/criticism with fiction and other literary styles to produce experimental and conceptual writing. Bamimeke's work has featured in publications by Origins Eile, the VAI News Sheet, the RHA, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios and TU Dublin.

www.dianabamimeke.com

Rachel Doolin is a visual artist and project designer facilitator based in the South of Ireland. Doolin’s multidisciplinary practice merges art, experimentation and ecology to create work that is inextricably linked to material research, driven by a desire to test the parameters of materiality, media and the criticality of issue-based practice. Doolin frequently collaborates with artists, NGO’s as well as community and professional organisations to create meaningful artworks that intersect current social and environmental practices. Doolin is currently collaborating with Irish Seed Savers Association on a project titled: Heirloom, which explores human connections to seed.

www.racheldoolin.com