AiR Breaking the Patterns 1 / 2024
09-12 / 2024
Lola Bhajan is a multidisciplinary artist known for her powerful voice and her interpretation of Andean ancestral singing with an ancient percussion instrument, a tradition rooted in northern Argentina. Her work spans performance, music, acting, and writing, delving into themes such as gender identity, freedom, and fundamental questions about life. Lola's practice centres on exploration through both research and lived experience, examining the intimate, the unseen, and the forces that drive us. Her art is a continual journey of discovery and self-reflection.
Sarah Kinneen is a multidisciplinary artist from Co. Wexford whose practice is deeply rooted in site-specific exploration and the ritual of daily walks. Drawing inspiration from ecology and visual art, she collaborates with the natural world through an embodied, tactile approach. Her work emphasizes the quiet, poetic exchanges between people, plants, and landscapes.
Holly Helena Brennan is an Irish Ceramicist & Educator, informed by dreams of Ireland and breaking tradition. Evoking prospects of hope in forms defined by movement and a colourful expression, Holly aims to uncover and learn a new way of existence free from intergenerational narratives. Holly is a recent graduate of Ceramic/Glass & Education from The National College of Art and Design. She received The NCAD Specialist Craft Award in 2023.
Filipa Almeida has a degree in Cultural and Communication Sciences from the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon, with a postgraduate qualification in Art Curatorship from Universidade Nova FCSH. She recently completed her Masters in Contemporary Typographic and Publishing Practices at the University of Fine Arts in Lisbon, with a dissertation entitled Avoid Static Structures - the artist's book as an independent and expanded object. She also has experience in various areas related to the visual arts, including independent curating, critical writing and the creation of artist's books. Her artistic practice is focused on the exploration of materials and gestures that give shape to constellations, always seeking to bring objects into the world that challenge static structures and inspire new perceptions. Her creative process is rooted in continuous experimentation and the search for new forms of expression, whether through word, image, sound, installation or sculpture.
Mairead Normanly is a visual artist, recent graduate of Limerick School of Art & Design with a B.A. in Fine Art, she employs a multidisciplinary approach that integrates painting, photography, printmaking, and experimental use of materials. Her practice explores the intricate relationship between humans and the spaces they inhabit. Her observations of human interactions with their environments, combining natural and domestic materials to examine the organic and abstract structures that shape and disrupt the spaces we reside in. These forms and structures can often be seen as disorderly or visual interruptions within a space, when in fact they are a symbol of individuals surrounding presence. Exploring how materials can signify and serve as a comforting reminder of occupancy and inhabitance of spaces, can help shift the observation of urban landscapes as being design concepts and to consider them as habitats.
Miguel Abreu (Caracas, 2000) is a visual artist and graphic designer. He has a degree in Communication Design, with a minor in Photography and a masters degree in Contemporary Typographic and Editorial Practices from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon. In his work, there is a tendency to explore a conceptual process that arises from the existential quest to discover how the world presents itself in a partial way. It is in this circulation of narratives, phenomena and images that the artist finds fertile environments to create points of confluence. He adopts a multidisciplinary and ‘investigative’ stance, searching for materials that are relevant to him, interconnecting them in analogue, temporal and spatial discourses.
Paul is a multidisciplinary artist working in painting and ceramics, exploring memory, place, and the interplay between the natural world and human experience. A graduate of Limerick School of Art and Design (BA, 2018) and Ulster University (MFA, 2023), Paul’s work has been exhibited widely across Ireland and internationally. His practice is deeply influenced by the psychology of the mind and the numinous experience of being in expansive natural spaces, mirroring the curiosity and playfulness of hiking. In addition to his studio practice, Paul has participated in residencies in Lisbon and Wexford, led community workshops, and received awards for innovation in artistic practice.
Pedro Anacleto (Lisbon, 2002) is a Portuguese artist based in Lisbon, with a degree in Painting from the University of Fine Arts of Lisbon. Through painting and sculptural objects, the personal and biographical narrative of his work is based on the exploration of sexuality and the erotic, as well as love. The work is based on the freezing of moments in which the universe is experienced, through lived experience and eroticism. Making use of iconographic and ancestral forms to create a mystical imagery, his work thrives on collage, both physical - in his objects - and within his painting, manufacturing a spatial assemblage of erotic and human feeling. His images invite an encounter with the erotic, sometimes assumed and vocal, as well as a reflection on its importance and how it can manifest itself in the being. The body is seen as a landscape and desire as the defining movement of this space-body in self-analysis and conversation with others. Eros is a confrontation with life and what sustains it.
Renato Chorão (b.2000, Moita) is a photographer based in Lisbon. In 2021 he completed a BA in Photography at the Instituto Politécnico de Tomar. Renato's photographic practice flows through an attentive and fragile look at his daily life. He sees photography as a tool for reflection on interpersonal relationships, identity and the world. His subconscious is linked to issues related to family, religion and sexuality, which end up contaminating his work.
Rachel Roberts is a Waterford based artist specialising in painting and photography. She is a recent graduate of the BA (Hons) Visual Arts in SETU Waterford. Her artistic practice is deeply rooted in the exploration of immaterial concepts such as memory, dreams and time. These themes serve as the guiding force behind her creative process, leading her to delve into the intricate landscapes of our inner worlds. Since graduating she has become a studio member of Garter Lane Arts Centre. Her work has been exhibited in the Central Library Waterford, GOMA Waterford, and The Old Market House Arts Centre in Dungarvan.
Rita Carmo (Lisbon, 1976) is a multidisciplinary artist and founder of Galeria Mergulho - an independent project in a domestic space. With a degree in Fine Arts (ESAD.CR), she completed the Erasmus programme and a research project at Kunsthogskolen i Bergen, with the support of the Research Council of Norway. In her work she investigates the relationship between Past and Present, Unconscious and Conscious, Private and Public, Strange and Familiar, articulating these dualities in objects, installations and performances. Exploring what remains of the building materials from her childhood home, she investigates the domestic space as an archive and setting for memories and emotions, in which she stages symbolic self-representations and creates installations that juxtapose heterogeneous spaces and times. By continually rehearsing strategies of belonging, protection and overcoming, she tests possibilities of integration between the child and the adult, between the past, the present and the future.
Sarah Hodnett is a mixed media artist based in the Southeast of Ireland. Hodnett is a recent graduate from the Limerick School of Art & Design, TUS with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art Painting (2024). Her practice focuses on bringing to light the unseen, challenging the parameters of painting using digital media such as project mapping, photography & film. This is combined with the physical act of painting to create site-specific light orientated installations. She was awarded the Collector General Innovation Award in 2024. Her work has been exhibited in several exhibitions in Ireland Including Outset Gallery, Galway (2024), The People’s Museum, Limerick (2024), The Hunt Museum, Limerick (2022) Lismore Castle Arts, Waterford (2021).
