Make Art Not Rubbish on YouTube

We've made a short video to summarise this great project which took place from January to April 2010.
Click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLr_6jB3jD8&feature=channel

Make Art Not Rubbish ... A Secondary School art project o-ordinated and facilitated by Draíocht, sponsored by Vodafone Ireland, January to April 2010.
Well known artist and sculptor Cris Neumann facilitated the creation of 3D works by Coolmine and Hartstown Community School students in a project that was a fun reflection of Vodafone Ireland's Green Agenda Policy. This educational and environmentally innovative visual arts project explored the concepts of communication, mobility and technology and how these concepts can work in the reduction and recycling of waste.

The art works resulting from the project generated zero waste by being produced from Vodafone Ireland's recycled materials. This process worked to educate students about the importance of environmental awareness, while giving them an opportunity to improve their arts skills.
The project culminated in an exhibition in Draíocht's First Floor Gallery before travelling to Vodafone Ireland's HQ during their Recycling Awareness Week.

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By Draíocht. Tags: Exhibitions, Visual Arts, Youth Arts

Do older people abandon fashion, or does fashion abandon older people?

Hi, my name is Garvan Gallagher and I'm an artist currently working with Draíocht Arts Centre in Blanchardstown until next year, and I'm looking for participants who are retired and up for a bit of adventure.

The project I'm undertaking is a photographic one and has a serious message. It's to do with the idea of invisibility that retired people commonly talk about. I made a previous photographic project with retired people in my hometown in Donegal, and the subject was raised by most of them. City life would probably be no different. Some felt that since they are over 65 and retired, their status in society had been downgraded as such. Some of them commented on younger people not acknowledging them, often looking right past them.







My 15-month residency with Draíocht offers me the chance to extend that research and make a new body of work that looks at this idea of invisibility within the older generation in Ireland. For this project, my research begins at an important source of our collective obsession with youth – the fashion-advertising image. The advertising industry makes money from promoting youth. Historically, it has been in their interest to promote ageing as something ugly and avoidable. That may be something that will soon be confined to history, as our older population is increasing all the time as we live longer and healthier lives. The advertising industry predominately targets a younger audience with younger skinner beautiful models, with fashion also geared to that genre.

The question my project will ask therefore is, ‘do older people abandon fashion, or does fashion abandon older people?’. Are older people invisible also to the fashion industry? I want to use the idea of printed media, the glossy magazine, the Vogue's and various other fashion shoots celebrating youth and promoting glamour, as the inspiration for giving older people a stage to look as beautiful and glamorous as their youthful counterparts. I will attempt to re-create fashion shots with older people as opposed to what society would normally expect to see – that of a younger body.

The process would be a slow one; a person could get photographed many times in the space of a year, allowing them time to get used to the process and to me, and hopefully have a really good time doing it. I would like the result to be a very strong comment on what we as a society perceive to be 'beautiful'. The work will be exhibited in an exhibition at Draíocht in September 2011.

Please get in touch if you feel like getting involved. You can email me: <ggATSIGNgarvangallagher.com>, or just call into Draíocht and say hi, we'll have a cup of coffee and I'll answer any questions you have. Bring your friends and get them all involved. The more the merrier!


In the meantime, I've created a questionnaire for anyone over 50 to help me with my research:
Questionnaire: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WYPF7YM



If you are interested in taking part, please call in to Draíocht and we'll arrange a time for you to meet with Garvan, or phone us on 8852622.

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By Draíocht. Tags: Exhibitions, Visual Arts

Amharc Fhine Gall VII

Draíocht and Fingal County Council are currently seeking submissions from Fingal visual art graduates for an exciting exhibition opportunity in 2010. This opportunity is being developed to recognise, nurture and showcase the range of talent of an emerging artist(s) from Fingal, working in any medium, seeking an exhibition in a recognised Irish gallery. This opportunity may take the form of a solo exhibition or participation in a group exhibition as part of Fingal County Council’s annual Amharc Fhine Gall (View of Fingal) exhibition to be held in Draíocht from November 2010 – January 2011. This year we will appoint an emerging, independent curator to select and present your work, a full colour catalogue will accompany the show.

Applicants must:

• Be born, resident or be working from in the Fingal County area.
• Have graduated between 2002 and 2010 from a recognised third level art college with a Diploma, BA or MFA. PhD applicants will also be considered as long as they fill the emerging artist criteria.
• Be able to exhibit work from November – January 2011.
• Be able to supply an up-to-date CV, artist’s statement and images before the closing date.

How to Apply:

Applicants should provide a typed covering letter along with an artist’s statement, and up-to-date CV. Artists should also supply at least 10 good quality images in the form of hard copy, slides or CD/ DVD which should be all clearly marked with the name, description, date, dimensions etc. Any other relevant supporting material can also be included.

Applications should be sent to:
Caroline Cowley, Public Arts Co-ordinator, The Arts Office, Fingal County Council, Swords, Co Dublin

T: 01 8708449

E: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Deadline: 5 pm, 5 August 2010

Michelle Hall Boat Paper, wood, plasticine and string 146 x 125 x 25.5cm 2009. Part of The Happy Valley Project. From Amharc Fhine Gall 2009

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By Draíocht. Tags: Exhibitions, Visual Arts

Drawing Day 2010 @ Draíocht

Draíocht took part in the National Gallery of Ireland’s Drawing Day once again this year on Saturday May 22nd, and in a new departure we held our first adult workshop as part of the day.

Using Holly Dungan’s exhibition Woodstock as a starting point artists Michelle Hall and Emily Good assisted participants in drawing branches, bark, squirrels, lanterns, leaves and all manor of things you could find in or around trees.

Participants hard at work

Everyone’s work was then put together to form a large tree on Draíocht’s studio wall.

Michelle piecing the tree together

There was some amazing work done on the day, congratulations to all involved!

Our Final Tree

A BIG thank you to Michelle and Emily who made the day possible

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By Draíocht. Tags: Arts in Ireland, Exhibitions, Visual Arts, Workshops

`The Great Auk and other stories` ...

`The Great Auk and other stories`
An Exhibition of paintings by Michael Mc Swiney at Draiocht, Dublin, June 4th to August 28th 2010



In this exhibition of works by Michael Mc Swiney, at Draiocht, the strong influence of growing up in Cork harbour permeates the surfaces, structures, and meanings in the paintings. Michael has travelled some distance from Cork in the last 23 years, sourcing form and content from far-off places, yet the colour, atmosphere and memory of the Atlantic Ocean is in the layers of paint, tar, pigment and earth. Out of these surfaces, he excavates from the memory and imagery of living in 70’s Ireland, in a working harbour by the sea, where beauty, soul and adventure merge easily with decaying or destructive materiality and man-made structures. The elemental possibilities of the coast are explored through a wealth of medium & materials applied to the canvas and of imagery he draws out; sea journeys, boats, dry docks, harbours, tides, oil rigs, pollution, abandoned buildings and factories and a forgotten bird, the Great Auk.


Michael McSwiney `Rounding the Drydock` 50x40cm Oil, pigment and metal dust on canvas,2009


In this exhibition every painting is a story. The freedom felt as a child travelling out in the boat to where only the horizon and the surface remain as a space to cultivate imagination is recreated. Explorations of run-down or abandoned structures and buildings encountered as a child continues in the paintings of architectural structures like ‘Abandoned factory’ which won Michael a Norwegian Art’s Council Grant in 2003. Considering the sea paintings along with the structures of decay and dilapidation, a liminal threshold is suggested, where things come from and go to, a line between man, the man-made and nature, presence & history, darkness and light, beauty and destruction, comfort & discomfort, material and meaning, narrative and abstraction.


Michael McSwiney `Slag Heap`


Michael Mc Swiney left Cork harbour to study art in Crawford College of Art and then to the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, later travelling to places like Denmark, India, Egypt and throughout Europe. Returning to Ireland in the late 1990’s, he had several solo exhibitions, exhibited at An t’Oireachtas and won the painting prize at Iontas in 2000. From 2000 Michael was based in Oslo, Norway where he regularly exhibited his paintings, lectured at the prestigious Einar Granum Art School and was awarded grants from the Arts Council of Norway and the Norwegian Culture Department.

Michael returned to live in Ireland two years ago and has presented solo exhibitions of works at Garter Lane Arts Centre Waterford, Linenhall Art Centre Mayo, Sirius Art Centre Cork and Droichead Art Centre Drogheda. He is represented in collections in Ireland, Europe and internationally.


Michael McSwiney `The Spit`


The Great Auk is symbolic of this return and of Michael’s process. This amazing bird first caught his attention when he was looking for inspiration in Oslo’s National Museum of History. Attracted initially by the beauty of the bird, and learning it was extinct, research led him to empathise with its tragic demise. These beautiful, penguin-like birds were so curious. They swam out to boats and were easily clubbed to death for the value of their beautiful feathers. Knowing no better and being trusting, the birds kept coming. The story of the Great Auk is indicative of one side of the destructive relationship between man and nature that is explored in Michael McSwineys’ paintings, the other side in this relationship adventures towards soul, imagination and expansive possibility. The last Great Auk was washed up on Long Strand in West Cork in the 1800’s, only down the road from where Michael now lives with his family. These paintings and stories mark a cycle of return in the work and life of Michael McSwiney.



Michael McSwiney `Abandoned Factory`



Further info about Michael:  http://www.michaelmcswiney.com/

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By Draíocht. Tags: Artist Interview, Exhibitions, Visual Arts