Artist Mary Sullivan, The Hold (2022), a collaborative project involving 24 Bere Island women, Image of one lady's favourite object. Photograph by Jed Niezgoda. Courtesy Mary Sullivan.
AIC Scheme Info session: September 5th 2023
Event · Information session
Twice yearly, the Arts Council offers Artist in the Community Scheme grants to enable artists and communities of place/or interest to work together on projects. The scheme is managed by Create, the national development agency for collaborative arts.
The scheme is open to artists from any of the following artform disciplines: architecture, circus, street art and spectacle, dance, film, literature (Irish and English language), music, opera, theatre, visual arts and traditional arts. The projects can take place in a diverse range of social and community contexts eg arts and health; arts in prisons; arts and older people; arts and cultural diversity. The aim of the scheme is to encourage meaningful collaboration between communities of place and/or interest and artists.
Create is pleased to announce an online information session on applying to the Artist in the Community (AIC) Scheme, with Grace Wilentz, project coordinator, AIC Scheme Development Support and Mary Sullivan, previous AIC Scheme recipient.
The information session is about answering any questions you might have about making an application to the Scheme. It’s also about sharing experience of developing and delivering a collaborative project through the Scheme. If you are an artist or a community organisation interested in the Artist in the Community Scheme but don’t know where to start, come talk to us. If you are an artist interested in developing a collaborative project with a community organisation or in a community situation this event is for you. If you are an artist who has applied before and would like to access further detail on the application process, please join us.
Mary Sullivan is a visual and performance artist from West Cork. She is based on Bere Island, an island engulfed in history and heritage, Mary’s work draws unique inspiration from her picturesque surroundings portraying many aspects of human nature that often go overlooked. As part of her project ‘At Home, At War,’ the artist has been developing a series of research projects and performances in different abandoned military sites on Bere Island. These sites are potent reminders of our colonial history and the types of political regimes that have existed in Ireland.
Mary’s work aims to subvert these historical and political sites to speak to more gendered forms of colonisation and regimentation. Paralleling the domestic and the military, the work draws out the repetitive nature of domestic chores with the drill and precision of military discipline. Attending to the function of dressage, the artist seeks to highlight the subtle performativity of uniform in the classification of roles and sensibilities in society. The performance of gender, identity and in/equality is investigated through different contexts and media to address the physiological and psychological tensions between the bodies we inherit and the head spaces we inhabit. Mary O’Sullivan achieved a first class honours on completion of Dublin Institute of Technology’s BA Visual Arts on Sherkin Island, and was awarded the RDS Visual Arts Awards Taylor Art Award for her work.
