Residencies Projects

The purpose of Wicklow County Councils Artist in Residence Scheme is to encourage intensive collaboration between groups and artists.

Wicklow County Council invites professional artists of all disciplines to work with groups such as schools, community and youth groups, hospitals and day care centres, retirement homes, detention centres and amateur art groups. The focus of the collaboration must be a particular project in which the artists and the participants work together to realise some artistic object or event. Up to five artists are appointed each year as short-term residents. Artists work with the host institution for a minimum of six weeks and a maximum of six months.

Residency with Curator Cliodhna Shaffrey

Aim of Residency:

To support ten artists based in or from County Wicklow in their practice and in making new work for contexts that are of interest to them. To collaborate with curators – throughout the process in a creative and inventive way. To establish a meeting place for exchange of ideas and to support practice and thinking around contemporary visual arts. To start a blog as a diary of the project. To consider aspects around contemporary arts practice through the possibility of inviting artists/curators/thinkers/etc outside of this group to present or deliver on specific areas or topics.

Principle:

The underlying principle considers how a local authority might support the engagement of curators and artists in inventive ways that are both meaningful and inspiring for individual practice. Central to the approach is the possibility to allow collective exchange and support to determine outcomes and allow experimentation and testing of new ways of working that can be considered through peer response and shared inputs. While the focus on practice and making new work, other elements central to artists' professional practice can be considered these might include opportunities, international contexts, networks, writings around practice; or there may be a greater interest in questioning issues around contemporary arts practice – e.g. 'what is the future of media-specific practice'; why are conceptual artists painting again?

Structure:

The process will involve a series of structured meetings that bring artists together to show practice and discuss individual ambition. The process begins with the artists and works outward from individual practices to explore possibilities that could have a number of different outcomes. From the start there is an understanding that individual practices are distinct and therefore the idea of working towards some kind of group initiative is not required. The creation of a blog will give a shape to the project and process and can provide a means of communication and give the project a profile - registering artists and curators biographies, work, books, texts, articles, YouTube, events and links. A small number of external people from the contemporary arts world can be invited to present at a more public forum in Wicklow or feed into the process in ways that align with artist’s interests.

Dominic Thorpe - Residency

Wicklow County Arts Office has appointed visual artist Dominic Thorpe, a graduate of the National College of Art and Design, as their Artist in Residence. Artist Dominic Thorpe works in a variety of media including performance, photography, video, audio recording and installation most often developing work through engaged and relational based processes. His work deals with the importance of individual identity and individual/personal experience. Dominic will be engaging and working with a number of people from the farming community throughout County Wicklow. Farming in Ireland has become a more difficult way of life while also becoming more vital. Farmers carry a connection to ‘land and history’ that runs to the core of the Irish psyche. Dominic wants to acknowledge Wicklow’s deep tradition of farming and the importance of carrying those traditions in to our future.

Resulting from the response of his interaction with this community group, Dominic will develop a new body of work using photography, performance and installation. This body of work will explore the connections between the landscape of the county and the landscape of the face. He will make physical and temporary portraits of the farmers and people involved inspired by the materials encountered on the farms.