ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE 2022

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International Artist Residency: Itamar Gov (Israel)

Itamar’s project suggests as a starting point the multiple histories of Fort Dunree and its surroundings, highlighting the serenity and uniqueness of the place, to explore the relationship between human beings and space, with a view to expand its reflections on the forms of memory. The artist’s idea is to address the notion of memory of spaces – as distinct from spaces of memory, looking into questions such as “How and what exactly can spaces “remember” from the humans that acted in them? What hidden histories do they entail and how can these histories be approached? What elements in them testify to their multiple pasts? And how do traces of their former lives manifest themselves, if at all, in the present day?”. Questions and reflections that the artist has been working on and exploring since previous projects to highlight the striking, and mostly unrecognisable, interrelations between elegance and violence, beauty and oppression, grace and exploitation, focusing on the role of memory in the context of ferocity and trauma, but most importantly in the context of restoration and relief.

The residency is anchored in the different phases that Fort Dunree went through, and alluding to its contemporary state, for the artist to explore the area of Dunree as well as delving into photographic, filmic, and written archives, both institutional and private ones, with the attempt to identify overlooked histories as well as specific forgotten details worthy of attention. Furthermore, Itamar is proposing a dialogue, with the accompanying Artlink team, to discover micro-histories and find triggering locations in which he could realise a site-specific work, responding to the history of the space and communicating with its current life in order to create alliances to question the impact of the past on our potential futures, considering various ways of living, creating and observing.

Itamar Gov
Is an Israeli artist, who has been working between Berlin, Paris and Bologna since 2010. In recent years he has been involved in different art and film initiatives, exhibitions, festivals, workshops and publications, among others: documenta 14, the Berlinale and the Berlin Critics’ Week, collaborating with institutions such as Haus der Kulturen der Welt and Fondazione Adolfo Pini. His artistic practice deals with the intricate relations between history, ideology and aesthetics. Must of his projects are based on an ongoing research and evolve around the intersection of art and politics, challenging a clear border between truth and falsehood and giving place to doubts in regard to what artworks declare, or are declared to represent “I am preoccupied with the (non)-significance of a single official Truth. I am focused on the inheritance of cultural traditions, narratives, conventions and gestures that are considered self-evident. Central to my work is the representation of different forms of personal, collective and institutional memory” (Gov, 2021).

Image by Matan Radin

Jessica Auer
Her 35-minute documentary film Shore Power was launched and awarded Best Film at the 2020 edition of the MOVE CINE ARTE, the documentary was also presented in Venice, Italy and Sao Paulo, Brazil. In 2020 Auer holds a solo exhibition Looking North at the National Museum of Iceland. She was also awarded with the Magnús Olafssón award by the Reykjavík Photomuseum during the 2020 Icelandic Photofestival. She has produced several projects during short residency programs, such as The Chilkoot Portraits with Chilkoot AIR (Alaska-Yukon); Seeing the forest for the trees with Centre Diaphane (Picardie, France); January with Skaftfell Center for Visual Art (Seyðisfjörður, Iceland).

Image by KOX

Icelandic Artist Residency: Jessica Auer

Auer is photographer, filmmaker and educator from Montreal, Canada, she is interested in photographing ancient sites. For her, landscape and architecture have an innate capacity to be understood as locations where time is layered and compacted. Jessica lives in Iceland where she is actively researching on the historic links between remote places in the North Atlantic, she also owns a photographic research centre called Ströndin Studio. Auer’s residency project explored the landscape around Dunree to share her experience through a series of photographic artworks. Auer is reflects on how landscape shapes us, and how we in turn shape the landscape, by examining places such as historical sites, tourist destinations and small communities.
Auer’s art practice is pinpointed on the study of landscape as cultural sites, focusing on themes that connect history, place and personal experience. Her images deal with both factual and experimental topics, documenting specific environments from an analytical perspective with a strong hint of anthropology and archeology. Her work topics include the preservation of cultural sites, globalization, temporality, storytelling and the role of the artwork in conveying these narratives.
Hence, the artist is proposing to create photographic works, to recall the past yet speak to Dunree as a contemporary site, photographing with a large-format (5×4) view camera as well as a mirrorless digital camera. The images are likely to be landscape based but may also include people if personal encounters arise. Her artistic research process will involve fieldwork, and creation in studio that will combine historical analogue processes with digital resources. Exploring scale will be an important aspect of her studio work. She is planning on experimenting with various practices within photographic image-making to have as one possible outcome the creation of an artist book.
Additionally, Auer’s artwork expresses a deep concern for nature, and the vulnerability of remote sites and communities when confronted with mass tourism. Her artistic gesture is motivated from her intention to reveal the geo-political realities surrounding travel and the paradox of attempting to preserve the same landscapes that the industry often seeks to exploit. Her large format photographs and videos examine the ways in which landscapes have been preserved, altered or commodified for sightseeing.

Newfoundland Artist Residency: Kym Greeley

“Travelling to Donegal Ireland, exploring the surrounding area, I will use the landscape and architecture of the area to capture images for source material to create a series of paintings and videos dealing with themes of time and place. In my art practice, I research place through physical processes and materials to contextualize my work. Isolation is a common thread that runs through my art practice and I am certain that this will determine the tone and content of my work in Donegal. I will find ways to absorb and engage with community histories and practices to learn how the community of Donegal either embraces or combats isolation.
I am very interested in how we move through the landscape as a contemporary society: capturing tourist attractions out the windshield of our car, satisfied to post our images and videos on social media to prove our visitation. Will this continue to be how we relate to our surroundings? Or has this global pandemic forced us to slow down, really study the small moments that would have passed us by before? Has a new routine emerged? It seems as though the processes that are vital to my practice have become part of more people’s lives again through the pandemic: long walks on winding paths, hours combing beaches, exploring new sites along our hill tops, learning names for native plants, foraging like never before, sharing seeds for gardening and recipes for new meals. The connection to the land seems to have strengthened. Centering on the rhythm of the days and seasons, I will explore what that looks like in Donegal through the practice I have honed in Newfoundland.”

Kym Greeley
With process as a priority in my work, I use the landscape, architecture and culture of my province to create paintings, screenprints and video work. In my view, idealized representations of Newfoundland such as boats and icebergs dominate art about this province. This motivates me to create new visual stories and to explore how our contemporary society connects to our landscape. I often place the audience in a first person perspective or use the windshield of a car as a compositional tool, similar to how we use screens on our devices as a way to view our virtual world from a fixed and limited perspective.

Image Derry Print Studio

Asle Lauvland Pettersen

I am a Norwegian artist, director and theater scenographer whose work consists of conceptual, fundamental installations. I have an extensive body of work consisting of commissions received from galleries, theatres and film makers. In 2016/17 I worked with internationally recognised documentary film maker Mohammed Jablay to create an installation with associated live video link to Gaza. This was toured throughout Europe during 2017 and featured in a Barbican London exhibition exploring issues on world health. I have also exhibited at the Baltic Biennale, Novo Museum, St Petersburg and have worked in Northern Ireland with LUXe outdoor Theatre Company.

Image by Martha McCulloch

Norway Artist Residency: Asle Lauvland Pettersen

In 1977 the Golden Records was sent out to space. The Golden Records is an archive coded onto a record that was created as a greeting to extraterrestrial life and/or our
descendants in the waste future. This archive contains a choice of sounds, music, images that is intended to represent the diversity of life and culture on Earth. A total of 118 photographs were also chosen to fill in the gaps of unique information about our civilization that the other aspects could not.
Using the Golden Record as inspiration I intend to make a project that will be a representation of humanity at Dunree through images and sound. I will create and curate 118 images, as well as recording and casting a new golden record. These two tasks will be carried out from my perspective and the record will be a representation of how the world looks and feels from Dunree in 2022. I will do this by creating photography and sound-based workshops for local residents to attend allowing me to compile images of Dunree, the people who live around the fort, their stories memories, and feelings about the area. The project will encapsulate a moment in time, the vast nature surrounding Dunree and become a history of the stories of Dunree; those that we chose to tell, and those we chose to leave out.
From the residency I hope to gain the basis for a body of artwork which will result in a final exhibition of photography and sound installation at Dunree. The project will contribute to reboot my artistic practice after a slow Covid period, with scarce project opportunities.

Irish Artist Residency: Aine McBride

The artist Aine McBride is planning to develop ceramic and (slumped) glass works, to be reinserted into her broader scheme of sculptural practice, during her residency at Artlink. Aine’s work focuses on the environment of the urban and domestic sphere by unpicking the material culture of surrounding objects to provoke a set of new understandings, our own understanding of the world and how we might in turn project an understanding of the world by what we surround ourselves with. The starting point for some of her pieces are photographs taken from the everyday and sourced images referencing architecture, design, fashion and other artworks. Her practice attempts to articulate a condition or state. This state is one of constant generation and adaptation.
Aine is from Donegal, but she has left to pursue an artistic practice, now she wants to return to explore Fort Dunree, looking for materials that are traditionally considered craft materials, and incorporate them into her practice by making functional objects, display surfaces, frames for photographic works or free-standing containers that can become incorporated with other works. She is interested in how these materials, fairly basic, tether themselves back in something that is outside of the space, to consider what is feeding the work.
Additionally, the artist is proposing to have a direct engagement with the materials, landscape and site at Dunree while engaging with the local artistic and wider community via an open studio. Aines art can be described as “site-responding” interventions because the setting helps her to make the work, but when the work is made, is mobile, so she can take it elsewhere. Henceforth, elements sit together to form a landscape of work, which can manifest itself both within the gallery space and outside of it. 

Aine McBride
Is an Irish artist with a degree in structural engineering, she was awarded a commission in 2019 for the EVA International Biennial 2020 in Limerick, as part of the festivals Platform Commissions. In 2019 she produced a solo show for Mother’s Tankstation gallery in London. Her work was featured in several exhibitions at key galleries and museums, including Mother’s Tankstation in London and Dublin, in MutualArt’s artist press archive. Her work is also featured at Kerlin Gallery and in ArtDaily.

Image by Samuel Laurence Cunnane

Maurice Doherty

Maurice Doherty graduated from the University of Ulster, Belfast, N.Ireland in 1997 and completed an MFA at the Glasgow School of Art, Scotland, in 2001. In 2019, he was awarded the British Council & ACNI International Development Award. In 2018, he was selected for the Artist-In-Residence programme at AIR Antwerp, Belgium. Solo exhibitions include FAQ, Bremen, Germany (2017), Manière Noire, Berlin, Germany (2015), Beursschouwburg, Brussels, Belgium (2010), Schalter Gallery, Berlin, Germany, (2009) Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Art, Glasgow Science Centre, Scotland (2008), Catalyst Arts, Belfast, Northern Ireland (2006), The Floating Series, Berlin, Germany (2006), Tramway, Glasgow, Scotland (2006) and Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland (2002).

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Irish Artist Residency: Maurice Doherty

I use a conceptual and cross-disciplinary approach in my practice that encompasses video, installation, two-dimensional work and text-based projects. These works link disparate aesthetic, social, scientific or philosophical themes that aspire to deal with contemporary concerns and issues.
A main focus running through my practice is how science in art has the potential to generate a common identity, solidarity and mutual understanding amongst humanity, especially in such politically and socially turbulent times. Currently I am particularly drawn towards how science in art can play a very significant role in addressing and understanding our current ecological crisis, as hopefully demonstrated in recent and planned future artworks.

For the Artlink Residency I plan to produce 2-3 new conceptual artworks in collaboration with the community around Fort Dunree that take advantage of the surrounding natural beauty of the Inishowen Peninsula. I also have a few preliminary ideas for a couple of quite humorous photographic works that would require a little time and experimentation. I am excited to apply for a period of production at Fort Dunree, Inishowen, as I believe it would have a transformative effect on my artistic practice, opening up new possibilities in my work in a very thought-provoking and inspirational environment, a totally different experience to the cities I have maily worked and lived in over the last 20 years.

Newfoundland Artist Residency: Michael Flaherty

On my first and only trip to Ireland (more than 15 years ago) I spent many hours exploring the seashore around Ballyconneely, the home of my paternal ancestors. Early in the trip, while distracted by sketching the boulders, rocks, and cliffs along the water, I became trapped on a tiny island as the tide came in around me. Although I was a veteran of seashore exploration in Newfoundland I was not prepared for the dramatically different speed and magnitude of the tides so far from home.
I propose to make an in situ craft-based installation using tidal action as both a metaphorical and logistical device. The tide provides a daily reminder that sea levels are not fixed, but do change over time according to natural and artificial conditions. The daily tide can operate as a micro-representation for an entire epoch of anthropogenic climate change. At the same time tidal energy is one example of an alternative energy source that could be used to counter the carbon crisis. I plan to build raw clay sculptures embedded with handmade porcelain floats (similar to traditional glass fishing floats) and place them within the tidal zone. As the sculptures decompose the floats will rise to the surface pulling a string along with them. More sculptures built during subsequent low tides will release more floats, providing a mechanism for weaving a rudimentary fabric using tidal motion.
In my most recent works I have been making porcelain floats to mark where I have placed amphoras in the harbour near my own town. As part of this project I have been learning traditional rope work. I am excited to research local rope-working customs while at the residency. I hope that in return I can share my knowledge of clay by teaching a ceramics workshop for your community.

Michael Flaherty

Michael Flaherty is an artist from Newfoundland, Canada. He studied ceramics at NSCAD University (BFA) and University of Regina (MFA) and has taught at numerous institutions across the country. He was a semi-finalist for the Sobey Art Award in 2011 and a finalist for the RBC People’s Choice award in 2013. He won the Large Year Award from Visual Artists Newfoundland and Labrador in 2013. A committed volunteer, Flaherty has been instrumental in establishing rural art initiatives including the Cultural Craft Festival and Union House Arts.
He is currently Ceramics Instructor at Haliburton School of Art and Design in Ontario, and operates his studio, Wild Cove Pottery, in Port Union, Newfoundland.

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Shane Finan

Shane Finan is an artist and project manager based in Leitrim. He assembles artworks from interactive contemporary technologies, found objects and traditional artistic media. His work is based in rural environments and examines the role of contemporary technology on nonhuman and human behaviours. His work is collaborative, in recent years he has worked with ecologists, foresters, trees, fungi, farmers, lichen, ants, artists and sheep.

Image by Rebecca Strain

Irish Artist Residency: Shane Finan

The Artlink residency provides an excellent opportunity to explore media and locality in the Inisowen peninsula. In 2019, I contacted TEAGASC to speak about a project relating to mycorrhizal networks in forestry; they have offered research support for this project. Mycorrhizal networks are interconnected networks between fungi and green plants that share nutrients in woodland areas. TEAGASC are a partner of Inisowen Uplands, a project seeking to develop agriculture with sustainable measures on the Inisowen peninsula.
In April 2020, I was selected as resident artist at Visual Art in Rural Communities (VARC)’s programme at Kielderhead Wildwood Project, Kielder, northern England. This project is a rewilding activity where forestry is being planted with native species.
My aim on the VARC residency was to draw together research from the project partners (including Northumberland Wildlife Trust, Newcastle University, Sunderland University) to create a development plan for a large interactive artwork that uses diversity in mycorrhizal networks as a metaphor for diversity in digital networks, in the year 2020, the 30th Anniversary of the introduction of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners Lee.

Newfoundland Artist Residency: Susan Furneaux

Working with the natural colour of my local materials speaks to me much louder than applying colourwith dye. The warm red of a dogwood twig, for me, sings a much sweeter song than any natural dye grown in a far away land. The dogwood works in harmony with dried rushes to create the foundation of a fall palette. With visible shifts in undertones throughout the year, the colour of the material and the associated work is a tangible representation of place and time.
I will explore and document the colour of the local natural materials with potential for use in textile-based compositions. I will create a series of two and three dimensional small-scale textile pieces that will incorporate traditional and non traditional textile materials collected in the area. Documentation of the pieces and all potential materials will be carried out both with digital images and on film. I believe film is the best medium to create memory of colour. The photography of work, materials, research and associated notes will serve as the body of work, as I feel the materials and the pieces are best left in situ.
The residency will impart a greater understanding of harmony in northern colour and materials, it will present the experience of a new palette; documentation offering a resource that will inform my future work. By connecting with local residents/artists, I will also research & document the contemporary and historic use of local materials in art and community practises. I will host an artist talk and hands-on workshop for the community. Leading others (both novice and skilled) through my practise and observing the outcomes, offers personal insight. I believe the geographical location of the community and the local residents will provide me with a unique opportunity for personal reflection and growth.

Susan Furneaux

Susan Furneaux is an artist, educator and craft consultant in Newfoundland and Labrador. Over the past 25 years, she has created with, taught natural dye and fibres throughout Canada. Furneaux has won multiple awards for her innovative use of natural materials with traditional techniques. She has exhibited internationally and her work is held in collections worldwide. Passionate about sharing her knowledge, Susan is currently an instructor in the College of the North Atlantic’s Textile & Apparel Design. She believes strongly in the creating work that merges technical skill with solid design concepts to create finely crafted objects.

Image by Martha McCulloch

Myrid Carten

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Irish Artist Residency: Myrid Carten

I want to use the residency to develop an experimental personal film – contrasting 16mm with digital documentary footage – that explores the psychological hold of home for the Donegal Diaspora. I will work on a moving image work which examines the fort-like aspect of the family home when left to only one sibling, and the cost of contested family inheritance on the Irish psyche.
The film looks at the diaspora’s search for home through my relationship with my mother, and my grandmother’s house in Donegal’s Gaeltacht. My grandmother raised her ten children in Glasgow and returned to Gortahork to build her dream home. This house, which has come to represent her love, has unleashed a legacy of violence and addiction. The Scottish Donegal migration and return is important in Inishowen as it is in Gweedore. The through-line for the film is the seeking of answers in a war zone family. The question I hope to explore with the community: does searching bring agency or further enmeshment?
The film anchors around a dramatic family saga, but engages this cinematically. How do we craft our ‘story’ from the mess we inherit? Therefore it is crucial to proximity to the Donegal shoot location and focused editing time to bring the project to its next stage: a 20min short film. Artlink residency is ideal as it provides vital time to edit,
develop experiments in filming ruins, complete shooting in Donegal, and for the community engagement, I need to expand the links between family home/besieged fort, through family archive and interviews workshop.

Adriana Valderrama Lopez PHD Researcher, School of Arts & Humanities, Ulster University

Last year I was invited by Artlink to be part of the selection process for the 2021 artist residencies. My interest in Artlink arose during the summer, when I went one afternoon to visit Fort Dunree. I am from Colombia but currently live in Derry and I was amazed by the beautiful landscape, the history it surrounds and the interesting conjunction between cultural heritage, a Museum, a Gallery and a Memorial in the same location. Furthermore, the location of the Fort itself, on the edge of the ocean, on the periphery of Ireland and at the same time so close to the border with Northern Ireland, gives a special uniqueness to the place. Therefore, in the same way, the gallery becomes a very exceptional dwelling as a creative and cultural venue.
Since that visit I have been following and participating in Artlink’s online activities, so when I was invited to participate in the selection process I didn’t hesitate to say yes. The quality and relevance of their online events have allowed me to delve deeper into questions and issues around Ireland, and the basis for cultural inquiry, where art is the factor in the ongoing attempts to think, rethink and shape our world. The idea of being able to read and learn about the projects of the artists interested in having a residency in this singular and special place, made me very excited.
The call was opened to the public in December 2020 and the selection process culminated at the end of February 2021. Some 574 applications were received with a total of 455 projects from international artists, coming from staggering 59 countries! 110 from Ireland and 9 from Iceland. These initial 574 projects were shortlisted for selection: a total of 137 international projects, 45 Irish and 5 Icelandic remained for the selection panel to review.
I was very surprised by the quantity and quality of the projects, a great variety of proposals supported by different methodologies and artistic expressions that in one way, or another, responded to the particularities of the space that surrounds and locates Artlink. Moreover, most of the projects were very well formulated and strongly articulated with the interesting history and geography of the place in relation to the accounts and objectives of  the organisation. Artlink presents itself on its web site as a distant but not isolated place “we are on the periphery, but we are centred” a place where you can “roll up your sleeves” for the art and craft of making, a space where “you can make your mark in many ways”, on the edge of the ocean “to look outwards”.
The massive response to the call is not fortuitous, art and the craft of making art needs a medium, a substrate that inspires and nourishes the artistic gesture: a place, a space, and a materiality that facilitates the practice and the performance that artists need to produce their work. Artlink is located in a geography loaded with memories, traces, and remains that transports the past to the present; a game of temporal-space interconnections that becomes a facilitating medium. Additionally, as another layer of meaning that is overlapped onto this, there is its liminality “we are on the edge of the ocean” in the North West of Ireland and Ireland lies on the edge of Europe. A place that is on the edge but at the same time centred and anchored by its cultural heritage. The perfect place for an art residency.
These unique characteristics of peripherality or liminal space, position Artlink as an appropriate place for artistic creation. On the edge of things, the horizon is always in view and insists that a horizon can be viewed from different directions. On the edge our vision can become distorted, we can become reversed or confused. It is this perspective that gives the liminal space its advantage, the sudden foregrounding of agency, and the sometimes-dramatic tying together of thought and experience to “gaining release from the imprisoning finality of the point of departure” (Barthes, 1985: 227).
The quality and variety of projects that I was able to read during this selection process respond to these unique characteristics of  Artlink at Fort Dunree, a place where all artistic practices and expressions can be enhanced and improved alongside the community, a “sustainable and vibrant community, confident in the uniqueness of its voice”. Artlink has been leveraging opportunities for Irish and international emerging and established visual artists to develop their creativity and art practice since 1992. It is the longest established professional art company in Inishowen, Co. Donegal. Artlink’s remit is for the North West of Ireland, including Northern Ireland.
After reviewing all the projects and taking into account Artlink’s vision, mission and aims, the selection panel comprising Esther Alleyne from Roe Valley Arts & Cultural Centre; Jeremy Howard from the Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny; Catherine Hemelryck from the Centre for Contemporary Art, Derry-Londonderry; Martha McCulloch, Artlink and myself came up with a short-list of finalist projects which were thoroughly discussed among the members of the selection committee. We were looking for projects to contribute to the artistic and economic ecology of the North West of Ireland. The short-listed projects all had in common the strength to creatively empower the local community by encouraging them to take part, creating new opportunities for people to be involved in the arts as audience and active participants.
Finally, we arrived at the 4 winning projects: 2 residencies for Irish artists, 1 residency for an international artist and 1 residency for an Icelandic artist. This selection intends to provide an interesting curatorial line for Artlink and the surrounding compound that constitutes Fort Dunree, resulting in a programme with events, exhibitions and activities with the capability to integrate the Gallery, the Museum and the Laurentic Memorial with the cultural heritage of the region.

About Artlink
Artlink is a thriving artist-led visual arts organisation, formed in 1992, based at Fort Dunree, Inishowen, County Donegal. It exists to support the ambitions of local, national and international artists at all stages of their professional career. Artlink also makes a valuable contribution towards the creative development and wellbeing of the local community and helps build a strong sustainable culture and economy in the region. This is achieved through a programme of regional, national and international exchanges and residencies, solo exhibitions by local artists, practical creative workshops and participatory community events. In an area packed with ancient history and breathtaking scenery, Artlink connects and inspires people to produce creative projects uniquely rooted in ‘place’ and inspired by this rural, coastal context.

About the Residencies

Criteria for Assessment of Applications

• evidence of an artist(or artist collective) with a developed and professional approach to  their work
• the ambition and experimentation inherent in the application and proposal
• the innovative nature of the proposal and how it responds to the site and surrounding areas
• clear benefits to the artist(s) practice  
• engagement with Artlink’s programme of activities (see www.artlink.ie and www.artlinkonline.ie)

Artlink is dedicated to cultural diversity in its programming, and encourages applications from artists, art collectives, and curators from diverse communities and  backgrounds.