16:00 & 17:30 Sunday 26 November
Promenading throughout the galleries
The Irish word Cogarnach directly translates as ‘whispering’ but it also suggests secrets and conspiracies. Composer Fiona Linnane, soprano Triona Walsh and the Youth Ensembles of Cork ETB School of Music will create a collaborative musical work responding to Crawford Art Gallery’s building, architecture, and history.
Following a series of workshops, audiences are invited to a final performance of the work. The presentation, which will be in a promenade style, will explore the responses to the spaces and Stories they have found through music, song and sound.
Two fully-booked performances of Cogarnach took place at Crawford Art Gallery on 26 November 2024. The following 15-minute video offers a flavour of a memorable project that sang to this historic building.
Fiona Linnane Cogarnach, 2023 @ the artist
DOMINIC THORPE: Dark Dark Mouth
15 - 28 January
Dark Dark Mouth is a body of performance, drawing, and installation work by Dominic Thorpe, which addresses perpetrator trauma and the Irish Civil War (1922-23) in Cork.
Perpetrator trauma is an often under-explored aspect of conflict. It can be experienced by individuals and groups struggling to comprehend and process violence for which they have been directly or indirectly responsible.
Thorpe takes various instances of Irish Civil War killings in Cork City as his starting point. Dark Dark Mouth gives expression to the perpetrator trauma that can mark and seep into individual, collective, and generational experiences in the aftermath of violence. His installation speculates if perpetrator trauma could have surfaced within the work of students attending Crawford Municipal School of Art – then located in this building – during and after the Civil War period.
This exhibition is accompanied by a performance and symposium:
Dominic Thorpe is an Irish visual artist who works through performance art, video, photography, drawing, installation, collaborative and relational based processes. Much of his work addresses contemporary and historical violence, human rights, and institutional abuses. In recent years, his focus has expanded to include an exploration of individual and collective perpetrator trauma and, in 2022, he received a PhD at Ulster University for research on Performance Art from Ireland and Perpetrator Trauma.
This is one of six project awards commissioned as part of BUILDING AS WITNESS and supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media under the Decade of Centenaries Programme 2012 - 2023.
Dominic Thorpe Research, 2023 © the artist
JAN McCULLOUGH: Night Class
13 April - 3 June
Jan McCullough’s work concentrates on how the invisible labour and the evocative gestures of ordinary people, the objects and goods they produce, and the everyday spaces where they work, can be represented within and outside of the institution.
Presented at a pivotal time before the building undergoes a period of extensive renovation, McCullough will create photographs and site-specific sculpture from her research into the history of Crawford Art Gallery. The project will respond to how acts of labour and the people who perform it are intertwined with the building’s fabric.
Jan McCullough Research (2023) © the artist
CURTIN // KEATING: Sit Stand Smoke
Linda Curtin and David Keating’s SIT STAND SMOKE is a brief adventure in a virtual reality (VR) experience with art historian Éimear O’Connor giving insights to the characters that appear in Seán Keating’s iconic painting Men of the South (1921 - 1922).
Eventually, Keating himself shows up with his own view on proceedings. Often considered a traditionalist, the artist seems unexpectedly curious about the new technology on display.
Funny, surprising, and presenting more than the occasional contradiction - one might be reminded of Seán Keating’s own personality, and of his passions and obsessions.
Curtin and Keating Sit Stand Smoke (Hero), 2023 © the artists
TEELING AND TAYLOR: in the glow of a frozen flame
Printed publication available in the galle