FIND

Mayo County Council & Linenhall Arts Centre Project “Find” nominated for Jim McNaughton Perpetual Award for Best Commissioning Practice in Allianz business to Arts Award.

FIND is a series of temporary artworks/installations/events in and around the town of Castlebar, Co Mayo. The works are installed within walking distance of each other and found via the maps included in the brochure or by attending the guided artist tours. The Linenhall Arts Centre acted as central headquarters/studio for participating artists and audience alike. This project is the first collaboration of the Linenhall Arts Centre and the Mayo County Council Public Art Programme, curated by Gaynor Seville. The series of temporary installations are created by Mayo based artists who applied for the commissions via an open competition process. FIND launched on Saturday 29th of March 2014. 

The theme of FIND is experience of temporary work, and documentation and legacy of temporary work. Artists were encouraged to consider discreet or ‘hidden’ works that will be ‘unravelled’, or be revealed, via the event tour, and maps – encouraging the audience to search out the work.

The Mayo artists who were selected for the commissions are Ian Wieczorek, Amanda Rice, Chris Leach, Nuala Clarke, Alice Dixon and Joanna Hopkins.

These artists also had the opportunity to be mentored and supported by International profile artists Alice Maher and Aideen Barry during the development and realisation of their ideas. Alice had a hugely successful mid career retrospective at IMMA last year and she has vast experience in working in installation, site-specific and temporal art. Aideen Barry has a multi versatile practice, which spans a range of art forms and approaches, including sculpture, performance, drawing, and animation. Aideen also acts and an advocate for visual artists based in the west of Ireland in her role as Western Representative for Visual Artists Ireland. She teaches at the Limerick School of Art and Design as a Lecturer in Sculpture and Combined Media.

An accompanying exhibition which ran from Saturday 29th March until 26th April 2014 at the Linenhall, exposed the studio work and process behind the production of the artists artworks. The gallery space became a living installation of artist’s studios during the month of the exhibition and audience members throughout the month had the opportunity to observe and meet the artists working in the space.

President Michael D Higgins will give out the Allianz Business to arts awards at a ceremony on 9th September at The National Concert hall, Dublin.

If you missed the work please take a look at the below links to get a flavour of the project.

You can listen to a podcast of interviews about FIND on RTE’s Arts Tonight, broadcast on 7th April:

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/arts-tonight/programmes/2014/0407/607390-arts-tonight-monday-7-april-2014/?clipid=1528180

A short film giving a flavour of the launch event and artworks can be found via:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhjdD3lwIT4

For further details about the project please contact project managers and curators:

Gaynor Seville, Public Art Co-ordinator for Mayo County Council, email: gseville@mayococo.ie Tel: 094 904 7561

Marie Farrell, Director of Linenhall Arts Centre, Email: linenhall@anu.ie Tel 094 902 3733