Buoys retrieved from the sea and repurposed as works of art have been put on display on the southern Aran island of Inis Oírr.
The new exhibition, curated by Dara McGee of Áras Éanna arts centre on Inis Oírr, involves some 16 established and emerging artists from diverse backgrounds.
Galway paddleboarder Ellen Glynn was guest of honour at the opening today.
McGee says the idea arose after the great success of Áras Éanna’s “Curracha” exhibition which saw 21 artists decorate 21 currachs displayed throughout the island during the Covid restrictions of the summer of 2021.
The fishermen of Inis Oírr did a coastal clean-up of the island, gathering washed up nets, broken fish crates and an abundance of sea buoys, he says.
The participating artists include Páraic Breathnach, who “returns to his first love,visual arts” for the event, and who is best known for his street creations “The Spanish Arch” commissioned by Galway Arts Festival in 1986, and “Gulliver” commissioned by Dublin Millennium Celebrations in 1988.
An exhibit at the Aras Éanna - Buoy exhibition on Inis Oírr Photo: Cormac Coyne
Michael Mulcahy was the first ever artist in residence at Áras Éanna, and is one of Ireland’s most famous expressionist artists an a member of Aosdána. It was after his winter on the island in the 1980s that the idea of the arts centre in an old weaving factory bore fruit.
Philip Jacobsen spent some of his childhood living in Inis Oírr and has been a frequent visitor to the island since. His forthcoming exhibition involves the shipwreck, the Plassey, which he has witnessed the deterioration of and is keen to preserve its memory in art form.
Martin Keady from An Spidéal, Conamara, has attended art and craft classes in a training centre in Casla, and says he loves painting, animation, film, ceramics and woodwork. He says he loves to use bold colour and vibrant imagery, and the fish he painted on the buoys are inspired by the creatures of the deep sea.
Sian Costello completed a one-month residency in partnership with the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) in the summer of 2022 and is a multidisciplinary artist based in Limerick city. In her work, Costello says she uses performative self-portraiture, drawing, and the camera obscura, to re-evaluate the hidden role of patience in the history of portraiture and figure painting.
Rachel Towey is a scenic artist with a career spanning 30 years in the theatre/TV and film industry. Hailing from Inishowen in Donegal and currently residing in Galway, she continues to work as an artist in theatre, as well as running a small business called MaraBay Deco.
Margaret Nolan is a Dublin-born artist who has had numerous solo exhibitions and group shows throughout Ireland. As Galway City Council’s Artist- in- Residence for many years, she produced many well-known murals that have left their mark on Galway’s urban landscape, and she has been leading curator of street art in the city. Her more recent work has shifted into new directions, concentrating on the body within the context of increasing abstraction and pigment layering.
Natasha Mc Menamin was born in Donegal and was studying in Galway to develop her artistic skills. She is known for her love of nature, which inspires her, her very detailed style, and the way she uses colours.
Siobhán O’Callaghan is a Dublin-based artist, who says she is invigorated by art’s capacity for storytelling, documentary and commentary. Her work centres around connection in various forms – shared experiences, intimacy, how we relate to our environment. She graduated from NCAD in 2015 and continued her training at Florence Academy of Art. Exhibitions include Alchemical Vessels, 126 Gallery (2023), RHA Annual Exhibition (2021, 2022, 2023), Utopia Dystopia, dlr Lexicon (2019), and Caoláit, Burren College of Art (2019).
Alissa Donoghue is originally from Wisconsin, grew up surrounded by forests, but has grown to love living surrounded by the sea. Having spent her first fourteen years on Inis Oírr dismissing sea swimmers as “mad”, she took it up as a hobby herself during the heatwave of 2018. This has deepened her layered relationship with the sea, she says, and some of its more “difficult” creatures.
She has a life-long interest in art making, enriched in recent years with art classes through Áras Éanna and many hours spent creating with her three children.
An exhibit at the Aras Éanna - Buoy exhibition on Inis Oírr Photo: Cormac Coyne
Niamh Ní Dhonnacha is a native of Inis Oírr and will be entering 6th class at Scoil Chaomháin in September. She loves art, especially painting and drawing. She mounted her first solo exhibition in 2022 at Teach an Tae.
“I made my buoys on the theme of the nature of Inis Oírr,”she says. “One shows wild flowers and a stone wall and the other buoy is the ocean with lobsters and seals. I had lots of fun doing this project.”
Mykayla Myers is a young Traveller girl aged 15 who had loved to draw from a young age.She is a pupil in Galway Community College and her goal is to do her Leaving Certificate and continue her education in University of Galway. She already has a well developed portfolio of her art work.
She is very interested in drawing portraits and hopes to develop this further. She is very proud of her Traveller background and heritage and won the overall Galway Traveller Achievement Award in 2023 for her artwork.
Esther Stupers is from the Netherlands, but made Ireland my home 13 years ago in Co Mayo. She studied as a gold and silversmith but after moving to Ireland she became more involved in welding and bigger projects. She has been working with Macnas for the last few years and was involved in the currach exhibition at Áras Éanna. She also paints and builds sets for local musical societies. She says her inspiration for this project are “the smallest one celled animals that live in our oceans “grabbing” onto the buoy, as in protozoa”.
Megan McMahon is a multi-media artist from Limerick, and studied at the School of Design and Creative Arts at GMIT. This is her first public exhibition. She is inspired by murals and street art in urban landscapes. Currently she is exploring contrasting colours to express emotion in her work, she says. She works on Inis Oírr during the summer months.
Bríd Ní Chualáin is an Inis Oírr native. She studied Foundation Art in NCAD, and has been working in various Irish language revitalisation initiatives. Bríd is also a talented musician who can be heard frequently playing in sessions on Inis Oírr.
Aisling Nic Craith was born and raised in Dublin, and I left at 18 to study art and design in Letterkenny, Co Donegal. From there,she moved to New York, Japan and Korea, and this had a large influence onher artwork, before moving back to Bray, Co Wicklow.
“I paint with encaustics and weave tapestries. Having only recently moved to Inis Oírr, I am inspired by the ever-changing sea, stunning light and stone landscape,” Nic Craith says.
Mary Fahy graduated from Limerick School of Art and Design, and her degree show was awarded the Revenue Commissioners Purchase Prize and selected for The Young Contemporaries exhibition, Belltable Arts Centre. She has been shortlisted twice for the Markievicz Medal Award for Painting, and has won the Larkin Memorial Award and the Irish Times Award.
“Buoys” is on display as an outdoor trail from the lighthouse on Inis Oírr from now until the end of September.
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