Working Lives Panel Discussion, Bealtaine and Create

Working Lives is a panel discussion which explores the challenges and rewards for artists working cross generationally, collaboratively and across disciplines. The discussion takes place in the context of Bealtaine’s Iconic Citizens Project and the specially commissioned ‘First Citizens Speak!’ by artist Deirdre O’Mahony working with older members of the community in North Clare. Also addressing the political, social, cultural and economic implications for older creative lives in a rural context, the panel includes the artist, and will feature GP, Dr Fergus Glynn with whom the project was developed. Additional speakers includes Maria Kerin, theatre maker & academic Anna Furse and the panel will be chaired by Catherine Marshall. This event has been developed with VOLTage and Create.

This event takes place as part of VoltAge, a festival-within-a-festival, glór Arts Centre, Ennis and Clare County of Culture, to celebrate Bealtaine’s 21st Birthday and Clare as County of Culture. VoltAge will feature three days of exhibitions, discussions and events from 5 May to 7 May.

Bios

Deirdre O’Mahony

Deirdre O’Mahony is an artist, academic and occasional writer. She received a BA in Fine Art (Painting) from St Martin’s School of Art London, an MA (Research-based) at the Crawford College of Art Cork and a PhD from the University of Brighton titled New Ecologies between Rural Life and Visual Culture in the West of Ireland: History, Context, Position, and Art Practice. She is a full time lecturer at the Centre for Creative Arts, Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology.

Anna Furse

Anna Furse is Professor of Theatre and Performance at Goldsmiths where she directs the MA in Performance Making and Co-Director of the Centre of the Body. She is currently on sabbatical after a 4 year Department Headship. Her career in professional theatre includes: 33 years as a director, writer, project leader, programmer, artistic director, curator, consultant and educator. Artistic Directorships include BloodGroup (1980 – 86), Paines Plough (1990 -95). Founding Athletes of the Heart in 2003 with a Wellcome Trust Impact Award, she has developed a range of collaborations including: with 2 hospitals, health organisations and international venues, including co-productions in Serbia and Slovenia. Most recent production includes When We Were Birds a performance lecture at the Cantieri Culturali Zisa, Palermo, Live Collision and GIFT festivals and an installation for the Freud Museum Mad, Bad and Sad programme 2013 – 2014. Her most recent publication Theatre in Pieces – Politics, Poetics and Interdisciplinary Collaboration (Methuen 2011) includes her Don Juan.Who?/?Don Juan.Kdo? with Mladinsko Gledalisce, Ljubljana. She is currently developing a new work with CREATE: The Anatomy Act to premiere in 2016.

Maria Kerin

Maria Kerin is an Interdisciplinary artist and independent curator. Maria combines embodied movement based on somatic principles ‘Actualities’, with process-based visual art practice to create installations, performances and new media body works.

Through body-based art work Kerin explores points of meeting with site, artist and audience in an autobiographical enquiry. Often this response includes working with other artists using the model of friendship to form creative co-alignments and a curatorial practice. At present working on projects with Helle Kvanne, Sweden, Vedelik, Estonia and SERDE, Latvia.

A graduate of Fine Art from DIT ’98 and a Bachelor of Business Studies from UL,’91, Kerin also holds an MA in Contemporary Dance performance from UL ’06 with exhibitions/performances in Ireland, England, Estonia, Latvia and Sweden. She is based between Ennistymon, Co.Clare and Puka, Estonia.

A founder member of Outrider Artists, mariakerin.blogspot.com, Kerin is presently doing a practice based PhD in University of Limerick , ‘A curatorial dance: an enquiry into the art of ethics in my curatorial practice, informed by somatic movement principles’.

Catherine Marshall

Catherine Marshall is a curator, writer and art historian. Formerly Senior Curator and Head of Collections at the Irish Museum of Modern Art and part-time lecturer in the History of Art and complementary studies in NCAD and Trinity College Dublin, she  was also Co-Editor of The Twentieth Century, Volume V. of the Royal Irish Academy’s  Art and Architecture of Ireland. She  has curated many exhibitions of Irish art including  ‘Views from an Island’ an exhibition of Irish Art from the IMMA Collection for the Irish Chinese Cultural Festivals in Beijing and Shanghai in 2004 and Comharsana Beal Dorais for the National Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia in 2005 and community based exhibitions such as Somebodies at IMMA, 1998. She has written widely about Irish art. Most recently Catherine curated Kathleen Lynn: Insider on the Outside, a creative investigation into the life and work of doctor, active suffragette, labour activist and nationalist Kathleen Lynn. The exhibition ran concurrently in five visual arts venues around Mayo and included artists Michelle Browne, Gary Coyle, Patrick Graham, Joanna Hopkins, Mary Kelly, Margo Mc Nulty, Seamus Nolan, Deirdre O’Mahony and Dermot Seymour among others.