Craig Francis Power
Craig Francis Power is a visual artist and writer based in St. John’s, Newfoundland, whose multidisciplinary practice spans hooked rugs, video, and literature. The author of four books, Power has exhibited his work extensively across Canada and participated in international residencies in China and Italy. His artistic inquiry draws from the histories of tapestry and public murals to critique the “Magisterial Gaze,” exploring the complex relationships between rurality, masculinity, and the mechanization of labor. Through a lens that balances the humorous with the abject, he investigates how landscape and identity are often commodified within tourism culture and resource extraction industries.
During his residency at Fort Dunree, Power intends to explore the cultural and political parallels between Newfoundland and Donegal, specifically concerning the “mysticism” of the land versus its industrial exploitation. His onsite work, a series of large-scale hooked rugs and videos will respond to the Irish landscape and his own ancestral ties to County Waterford. Power’s practice is deeply rooted in social interaction; he aims to engage the local community through storytelling, workshops, and open dialogue to examine how working-class identities are shaped by, and rebel against, modern capitalistic orthodoxies.
Helen O’Shea
O’Shea is an Irish artist based in Cork who exhibits internationally. She has developed a practice of sculptural making that directly involves us with issues of waste and recycling. By use/reuse of existing materials, she creates forms that mimic the natural world and engage our relationship to it.
O’Shea’s art practice researches the journey of waste plastics in the sea and challenges our anthropological perceptions of the deep underworld. O’Shea’s primary material is found plastic from local beaches and collected recyclables, she reimagines this debris and creates creatures reminiscent of marine life. The process begins with gleaning throwaway plastics, mulling their material qualities and exploring their potential forms; it is an enquiry that is led by the trust of ‘making through doing’. O’Shea uses techniques and equipment synonymous with fibre and textile arts – the sewing machine, tacking pins, embroidery threads – and boldly takes ownership of this waste material by focusing on new narratives for waste Plastics.
Ivana de Vivanco
Ivana de Vivanco was born in Lisbon (Portugal) to a Peruvian mother and a Chilean father and grew up in Santiago (Chile), Quito (Ecuador) and Lima (Peru). She studied fine arts at the University of Chile in Santiago and completed her master’s degree at the HGB Leipzig, where she also participated for eight years in a reading group on critical theory and psychoanalysis founded by Prof. Christoph Türcke. She has held seminars and lectures at several institutions, such as the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago, the Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin, the University of Łódź, the University of Chile, the ETH Zurich, the Bauhaus University Weimar, the University Alberto Hurtado and the HGB Leipzig, where she is currently a professor. She has received numerous scholarships and awards, e.g. from the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the DAAD and the Marion Ermer Foundation. Her works have been exhibited worldwide: Instituto de Visión in Bogotá, Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago, National Art Museum in Bucharest, Natural History Museum Neuchâtel, Kunsthalle Darmstadt, Stadtgalerie Kiel, Bank Mab Society Shanghai, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig, Galerie Anita Beckers Frankfurt, Künstlerhaus Bethanien Berlin and The RYDER Projects Madrid, among others. She lives and works in Berlin.
Marie Barrett
Born in Derry in 1964, artist Marie Barrett is known for her socially engaged art practice. From the 1980s onward she created site-specific public art works, using processes of collaborative engagement and dialogue with specific communities, such as garment workers, women’s groups and young people in Derry and Donegal. She attempts to encourage dialogue between often-divergent community groups.
Her solo exhibitions include the Orchard Gallery, Derry; the Irish Arts Centre, London; the Irish Arts Centre, New York; the Arts Council of Northern Ireland Gallery, Belfast; and I.M.M.A., Dublin. Her work has been part of group exhibitions at the Golden Thread Gallery including ‘Icons of the North’ in 2006, part of our Collective Histories series, and ‘Things We May Have Missed’ in 2007.
Barrett is a co-founder and Artistic Director of North-55. She has been the recipient of several national and international awards including the Alice Berger Trust Award (Berlin) and the Cultural Relations Travel Award (Quebec).
During her residency at Artlink Marie will be working towards a socially engaged film project. The film addresses the defective concrete block crisis in Inishowen and Donegal. Collaborating with the Inishowen Development Partnership and community organisations, the artist will work with affected residents to explore their experiences through workshops and filming. The project culminates in an immersive public screening, engaging 250 participants and an audience of 1,500.
Yulia Gasio
Yulia Gasio is a Ukrainian-born artist and scholar based in California, where she serves as an Assistant Professor of Drawing and Painting at California State University, Long Beach. Her practice is a profound exploration of the human condition, utilizing expressive figurative painting to navigate the intersections of personal memory, political upheaval, and cultural identity. By juxtaposing the fragile human form against symbolic “debris” from her Soviet-era roots, Gasio creates a visual dialogue that bridges her heritage with her life in the American multicultural landscape.
During her residency at Fort Dunree, Gasio will investigate the celtic mythological concept of “widdershins” the counterclockwise, otherworldly path, to explore the site’s history as a liminal space of defense and survival. Drawing parallels between Inishowen’s rugged landscapes and the Ukrainian experience of navigating historical upheaval, she intends to produce a series of large-scale paintings that blend local folklore with narratives of decolonization.
Beyond her studio practice, she will engage the local community through gouache plein air workshops and artist talks, fostering a collaborative dialogue on the intersection of landscape, myth, and identity.
Mary O’Malley
Mary O’Malley is an American-born ceramic artist based between Long Island and London. A graduate of the Royal College of Art and a two-time recipient of the American Craft Council’s Award of Excellence, O’Malley’s work is held in prestigious collections from the Tate Modern to the Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute in China. Her practice investigates the intersection of materiality and identity, frequently re-contextualizing historic decorative forms through contemporary socio-political narratives.
During her residency at Artlink, O’Malley will respond to the architecture of Fort Dunree, using bricks as symbols of colonial intervention and human permanence. Her project explores the layered histories of Inishowen, drawing parallels between British military origins, Irish migration to the American South, and the transatlantic legacies of the plantation economy. By incorporating brick clay and coastal water imagery, she aims to capture the tension between the enduring weight of history and the transformative power of the Irish landscape.
