Craig Francis Power
17th June – 15th July
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, Craig 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
August 1st – 31st
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
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)
In her artistic practice, she is always interested in working in situ, grounding her research in specific places while combining this direct experience with speculative fictions. She believes in the power of fiction as a way to open space for alternative narratives and new histories that reshape our understanding of reality.
For the residency at Artlink, she will explore Fort Dunree and its surrounding maritime landscape through speaking with local people and engaging with communities connected to the area. She is particularly interested in the myths, stories and local narratives that emerge around the ocean: how the sea is imagined, remembered, feared or trusted and also how these stories are passed from generation to generation and transformed over time.
Marie Barrett
June – July
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
25th June – 16th July
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
9th June till 31st July
Mary O’Malley is a ceramic artist and sculptor currently based in Macon, Georgia, in the Southeastern United States. She is a Connaught-Irish-American and was raised outside of New York City. Her work explores themes of ornamentation, history, and cultural identity, often using ceramic materials and mixed media to investigate the intersections between the natural world and human-made systems.
She holds an MA in Ceramics and Glass from the Royal College of Art in London and a BFA in Crafts (Ceramics) from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Saatchi Gallery (London), the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show, and the Chun Art Museum (Shanghai) with solo shows at the Clay Studio and Arch Enemy Arts in Philadelphia, and the McEachern Art Center in Macon, Georgia.
While on residency at Artlink she will stage an exhibition of her work. The exhibition forms part of the Earagail Arts Festival and runs 28th June till 27th July. This exhibition draws on three interconnected bodies of work: Bottom Feeders, a series of ceramic vessels and plates exploring aspiration and decay through marine imagery; A Seat at the Table, an immersive installation critiquing class performance and colonial taste through a satirical dining-room setting; and a new body of work developed during a residency in Rome, using snake imagery and 18th-century European ceramic forms as allegory. Together, these projects form the basis for a new installation shaped by the cultural and physical landscape of Inishowen.
