Peripheries residency and performances at The Ceramic House, Brighton

Taking part in a 5 week residency, with culminating exhibition, and performances, with Irish sound artist Linda O’Keefe, and Estonian ceramic artists Pille Kaleviste and Juss Heinsalu at the Ceramic House, in Brighton. 4th of April to 8th of May. Accompanying exhibition is on the 7th to 29th of May.

Peripheries launches EDGES, an ambitious international ceramic and sound art project between three nations at the western and eastern edges of Europe: Ireland, Estonia and the UK.

EDGES focuses on international exchange and residencies with artists collaborating across the disciplines of ceramics and sound art. Outcomes include exhibitions, presentations, performances, geo-located sound walks and community engagement activities.

Peripheries invites two sound artists from Ireland to collaborate with two ceramic artists from Estonia, the results of which will be exhibited as the centre piece at The Ceramic House offering this May, accompanied by an exhibition of contemporary ceramics by leading Estonian artists.

The exhibition is curated by artists and curators Kay Aplin and Joseph Young.

The results of the residency will be exhibited in In Camera Gallery, The Ceramic House’s white cube, and the Estonian ceramics show will be displayed throughout the house. All the exhibiting ceramic artists selected have an interest in exploring traditional techniques with a contemporary sensibility, offering UK collectors, specialists and artists a rare overview of the breadth of contemporary Estonian ceramic practice today. The month-long residency is funded by I-Portunus EU funding.

Peripheries is a pilot for EDGES, a 2 year-long investigation into meeting places, what it means to work at the edge of something, to be on the fringes, and understanding artistic practice as a so-called ‘cutting edge’, where boundaries are pushed back, and frontiers explored. EDGES will continue in 2023-24 with an exhibition of Irish ceramics at The Ceramic House, international residencies in Estonia and Ireland and culminating exhibitions at Watts Gallery, UK and Wexford Arts Centre, Ireland.

Supported by https://www.i-portunus.eu/ https://kulturanova.hr/english https://www.mitost.org/ https://culturalfoundation.eu/ https://culture.ec.europa.eu/creative-europe

'BirdBecomeBird' performance work bought by Arts Council for Collection

The Irish Arts Council have added the performance work ‘BirdBecomeBird’ to their collection, the first performance only work to acquired so far.

Performance image of BirdBecomeBird from ‘Post-Opera’ exhibition in TENT Rotterdam, 2019, curated by Kris Dittel.

This vocal work draws upon an exploration between the human and the nonhuman, as well as taking inspiration from the theories of becoming from Giles Deleuze and the compositions of Oliver Messiaen.

Article on the Arts Council buying this work ‘How to Sell Art When it’s a Performance, not a Painting; is in the Dublin Inquirer here.

The artworks newly added to the collection are by artists who live and work in communities both across Ireland and internationally. The acquisitions include drawing, installation, performance, painting, print, photography, sculpture and video.

Announcing the purchases, Maureen Kennelly, Director of the Arts Council said:

"The Arts Council is delighted to continue the work of the Collection through the acquisition of a range of exciting, ambitious work by a wonderful group of artists. The work included here shows the ambition and breadth of practice in Ireland’s visual arts currently, and we look forward to sharing these works with the public on whose behalf the Collection is developed. In both supporting artists and engaging the public, this work delivers on the Arts Council’s key priorities in its 10 year strategy Making Great Art Work: Leading the Development of the Arts"
More from the Arts Council on their new acquisitions here.

Living Balance exhibition 2022 Library Project/Black Church Studios

Caoimhe DALTON / Hazel EGAN / Kate FAHEY / Suzanne WALSH

The Library Project, 4 Temple Bar, Dublin 2

13th – 29th January 2022

Curated by Debi PAUL
Winner of Black Church Emerging Curator Award

‘Living Balance will launch the celebration of Black Church Print Studio’s 40th Anniversary and our contribution to the Irish Arts Scene over the last 40 years.

The artists in Living Balance work with print in its widest definition. They look to the traditions of the process reaching to its earthed materials such as copper, stone and soil, weaving them along with their concepts. Caoimhe Dalton, Kate Fahey, Suzanne Walsh, and Hazel Egan‘s works investigate elements of ritual, pattern, voice, language and re-wilding.

The exhibition features a recorded audio: An encounter with Living Balance by writer, broadcaster and folklore enthusiast Manchán Magan.’

Works below for Living Balance by Suzanne Walsh.

Murmur 2 by Suzanne Walsh, digital print. 280cm height x 260cm width. Photo by Louis Haugh.

Detail of ‘Murmur 2’. Photo by Louis Haugh

The works selected for Living Balance by Suzanne Walsh include a large digital wall print, called ‘Murmur 2’ which is an edit from a script from a performance called ‘Murmur’, previously performed at the Hugh Lane Gallery, and Plugd records, both in 2019. The text takes comments from under videos posted online about starling murmurations and reconfigures them as a speculative futuristic musing on group activity and the mind.

There is also a riso print edit available as part of the show, which is a further extract of Murmur 2. If you would like to buy one, please get in contact.

The other works selected were video documentation of a performance of the vocal work ‘BirdBecomeBird’ from TENT Rotterdam in 2019, and a small video work called ‘True Answers of Things to Come’ from 2019, which is a video of a jackdaw raised by the artist during their work for a wildlife rescue.

Documentation of ‘BirdBecomeBird’ performance from TENT Rotterdam 2019 and small video of jackdaw ‘True Answers of Things to Come’. Photo by Louis Haugh.

Decaying video of ‘BirdBecomeBird’, photo by Louis Haugh.

True Answers of Things to Come, video. Image by Louis Haugh.

Riso print, printed at Black Church Print Studios as part of the exhibition, 100 prints. Available to purchase, 20 euros, please contact if interested to obtain one.

‘Susurration’, Riso on flavin, edition of 100.

Interview with The Model Gallery Sligo

‘Almost There you Are’ 2021

As these podcasts are now taken down, the audio work can be found here at this time. Our Always is Here.

This interview took place in conjunction with ‘The Body Electric’ exhibition, for which Walsh contributed a text work, ‘Between the Lights/For You Only We Exist’ (found in the publication) a reading of this work (podcast 2), and a soundpiece called ‘Our Always is Here (Podcast 4).

This series of work was made by automatic writing processes with spirits in the artist’s house, then edited into poetic and audio multi-vocal forms. The inspiration was from the spiritualist writings of George William Russell, or Æ as he preferred to be called, whose painting ‘The Sower’, is included in the exhibition.

'Birds, Watching' as part of 'Winter Papers' exhibition, Galway 2019

‘Birds, Watching’, started as an essay with photographs that was published in Issue Five of annual arts anthology ‘Winter Papers, edited by Olivia Smith and Kevin Barry. This creative essay explores themes around death, mourning, mysticism and bird symbolism in the background of the artist’s father’s decline and death. During this time she became involved in wildlife rescue. The accompanying photographs show some of the relationships she formed with birds.

On further invitation from Maeve Curtis of Engage Studios in Galway, the work and issue became a ‘Winter Papers’ exhibition. The work expanded into further printed photographs, a video projection, an audio text work which was a poetic ‘shadow’ version of the video and a series of talks and performances. This took place between November 2019 and February 2020.

More info on the exhibition in general is here.

‘True Answers of Things to Come’ video projection of jackdaw and shadow double

'The Land Where Nothing Is' 'Embodiment' exhibition Vienna, 2019.

‘The Land Where Nothing Is’, at Galerie Michaelastock, Vienna, as part of ‘Embodiment exhibition, 7th September, 2019.

‘The Land Where Nothing Is’, comprises of wall-text, video of poetic text and audio, and a performative reading with audio. For ‘Embodiment’ exhibition, the artist also took part in a talk on the work with artist Lilo Nein. This group exhibition was curated by Michaela Stock and Helen Carey, and supported by Fire Station Artist Studios. Link to more details on exhibition here.

‘Suzanne Walsh’s work, ‘The Land Where Nothing Is’, is a set of concrete poetry made from fragments of lines from the poems of both revolutionary and poet Thomas McDonagh and poet and friend Francis Ledwidge, as well as comments collected from online Irish Facebook groups that discuss housing, environmental issues and wildlife identification. Linking these is the sound of the bittern, due to its connection to McDonagh and Ledwidge, a bird that is currently extinct in Ireland. McDonagh translated the poem ‘The Yellow Bittern’ (Cathal Bui Mac Giolla Ghunna) from Irish to English. After McDonagh’s execution for his part in the 1916 uprising, his friend Francis Ledwidge wrote a poem ‘Lament for Thomas McDonagh’, that begins ‘He shall not hear the bittern cry’. The poems question exclusion, identity, and existence in today’s Ireland.’

Originally this work was commissioned for a show called ‘A Different Republic in the Lab Gallery, Dublin, 2016, for the 1916 centenary as well as 20 year anniversary of the Irish Government’s report on the Status of Peoples with Disabilities ‘A Strategy for Equality’. More on this project and original exhibition is on this website here.

Video above shows a selection of the artists that took part in ‘Embodiment’.

'BirdbecomeBird' at 'Post Opera' exhibition, TENT Rotterdam, 2019.

‘Birdbecomebird’ was performed at ‘Post Opera’ exhibition, 14th of June 2019, curated by Kris Dittel and Jelena Novak. More info on the exhibition is here. Info on the performative event is here.

‘Questioning the human-animal divide is a reoccuring theme in Suzanne Walsh’practice, which encompasses writing, music and visual art. Her vocal performance BirdBecomeBird, commits to the idea that music trecends species boundraries and reframes the bird song as a form of vocalisation and music making. Starting with a sequence of looping, improvised singing, and with musical phrases, the piece crescendoes to a cacophony of nonhumans voices , eventually filling the space with cries and cackles.’

Murmur at Plugd Records, and Hugh Lane Gallery, 2019

Murmur was composed while on residency at The Guesthouse art-space in Cork in February 2019. It was inspired by records of a ‘Battle of Starlings’ over Cork city in 1621. The script for Murmur is made from comments taken from a BBC video of a starling murmuration posted online. Any direct reference to the topic of starlings themselves is removed, leaving speculation on group mind control, political paranoia, allusions to strange occurrences. Murmur also includes electronically processed vocal improvisations.

'Line-n' at Sion Mills Linen Museum, 2018

Line-n is a series of commissioned texts for Sion Mills Linen Museum, Co. Tyrone. by Alice Butler, as part of a project with VAI Northern Ireland called ‘New Spaces’.

The texts, which became four poems, use extracts from diaries from the family who owned Sion Mills linen mills, as well as articles and other accounts. The poems also refer to economic globalisation, mythology and ancient history. The texts were installed amongst museum works, which were also selected by the curator and artist for the duration of the exhibition.

One of the poems was also further published in Tangerine magazine Issue 7.

'Headlands' at Entangle exhibition, The Phoenix Institute, Brighton 2018.

‘Headlands’ is a series of work made on invitation to take part in ‘Entangle’ group exhibition, part of the Diep-Haven festival. Group exhibition curated by Rosie Hermon, a visiting curator to Fire Station Artist Studios.

The theme of the exhibition is the relationship between human and landscape. Headlands is composed of a poetic text, in the form of a graph, referring to the ambiguity between language used to describe the human and the geological bodies, and their origins. This is accompanied by a graph in chalk, a substance found in the landscape around Brighton. The graph refers to geological strata, in particular inspired by Victorian illustrations which took a more fanatical element, as well as alchemical drawings.

The work also included an additional text delivered as a performance with audio. This text was composed when the artist was in residence in the Model gallery in Sligo, and discusses death and geology, cholera and vampires, as well as a guided tour up Knocknarea mountain. This is accompanied by processed field recordings from Queen Meath’s cairn on Knocknarea and thunderstorms.

'All the Beast' at Zoología Fantástica - Solstice Arts Centre

Performance of ‘All the Beast’ at Solstice Art Centre Navan, at opening of Zoología Fantástica group exhibition, curated by Sabina McMahon, February 2018.

This work, (also previously discussed in the ‘Art’ section), is a performative lecture composed of transcripts of David Attenborough documentaries. The text is re-edited, removing the names of the animals to create a poetic confusion, a ‘rewilding’ of language, a comment on the authority of language and delivery. In this performance, the lecture is delivered as a guided tour through the other artworks. Extract below.

Lazarus Lingua - The Hide Project, January 2018.

Performance of ‘Lazarus Lingua’ for research group, as part of ‘An Urgent Enquiry’ with Fingal Arts Office.

A performance of my text performative work ‘Lazarus Lingua’, which is a recitation of extinct animals from 4000 to present day (or in this case 2018). The pronunciation of latin within the piece has some subtle changes, using pronunciations of classical latin rather than scientific latin, so from when latin was a living language. The work functions as a kind of invocation of the dead.

This performance took place at Garrett Phelan’s Hide Project, In North County Dublin, in January 2018, as part of research for ‘An Urgent Enquiry’ art project, on climate change, with Fingal Arts Office. Extract below.

Culture Night in the Model Niland Gallery, Sligo

I was invited to perform in the Model Niland Gallery, Sligo by Emer Mayock, who was curating a ses of musical events. My performance was scheduled for Culture Night, September 2017. For an hour long performance in the gallery, amongst the works of the current exhibition at the time 'High Winds Move Slowly' by Arno Kramer and Henk Visch, I performed different works in different rooms. In one room I performed spoken word to a sound track, in the main space I returned periodically to electronic musical instruments, and created a sound track based on natural sounds, songs, distortions, improvisations, and compositions. In the third room I performed acoustically with an accordion and invited the audience, who moved with me each time to join in with percussive objects. In this way the musical performance spread throughout the gallery and the works. Link to event here. 

Image by Rebecca Kennedy

Image by Rebecca Kennedy

Lost State

Lost State is a collaboration between Hugh McCabe and myself, that took the form of an exhibition in Draoicht Art Centre in Blanchardstown, Dublin in October 2017. Hugh invited me to make text and audio in response to his photographs and video. The exhibition took the form of photographic prints, three video screens, and then audio with a voiceover that played from three different sources in the gallery. The upstairs space in Draoicht has a kind of 'walkthrough' quality, so the voiceovers functioned like tannoy announcements, that one might catch walking through. The exhibition was curated by Sharon Murphy. 

'Lost State, a mixed-media installation by Hugh McCabe and Suzanne Walsh, comprises of photography, voice, 3D animation and audio. The work centres around photographs of disused computer parts shot from the imagined point of view of future entities uncovering the technological detritus of our time. A soundtrack accompanying the photographs alludes to a speculative narrative about the circumstances of the discovery of these objects and their significance for those finding them. A short film using digital 3D modelling and rendering techniques simulates drone footage of the exploration of one of the discovered objects.

The photographs are all shot on a large format 4”x5” analogue film camera in order to make a connection with early photographic history and its use as a form of documentation and enquiry. The work aims to trouble the boundaries between various categories: the organic and the inorganic; the imagined future and the perceived past; the human and the technological; the analogue and the digital; the secular and the sacred.' You can read on Visual Art Archive in Draoicht here. 

Text mentions (with more images of exhibition). 

Quick reflections following Lost State at Draíocht by Moran Been-oon, here

Des Kenny Reviews Lost State here. 

Suzanne Walsh giving performative reading at the opening of Lost State, October 2017. 

An image by Hugh McCabe for Lost State

Writings 2016-2017 - Resort Revelations, Circa, Critical Bastards, VAI newsletter

Art writing, fiction and prose from 2016-2017

Resort Revelations

Resort Revelations is a residency set in Lynders Mobile Home park in Portrane, North County Dublin. The invited artists show their work during the annual Bleeding Pig residency every September. More on the residency can be found here. 

This year I was invited by Arts Officer Caroline Cowley to stay for a week in the residency mobile and contribute a short creative text to the program, which was included on the poster for the event. I created a prose piece during the short week's stay, using a letter found in nearby St. Ita's psychiatric hospital as well as text fragments taken from a Samuel Beckett short story set in the area, Fingal, along with my own observations on the area. The piece is called Who Will Silence Them at Last, and reflects on the tensions between nature in the area and human built structures and systems. The event poster is available to read here. 

Circa Art Magazine

I wrote a short piece in response to Maria McKinney's show Sire in the Royal Hibernian Academy 9th Sept - 23rd October 2016. The piece can be read here on the Circa website, here. 

Another piece published in January 2017 is on Denis McNulty's show 'I'm Getting Parts' which ran from Nov 2016 till Jan 2017 at the Oonagh Young Gallery. I took a science fiction-esque approach to this work here. 

VAI Newsletter

I wrote a report on the above mentioned Resort Revelations for the January-February Issue of VAI newsletter, available to read from galleries nationwide. Info on the issue, edited by Joanne Laws available here. 

Critical Bastards Issue 13

I have a short story called In the Bird Temple in Issue 12, this is now available to read online

A Different Republic - The Lab Gallery, Dublin

My concrete poetry project The Land Where Nothing is is a commissioned work by Fire Station Studios and ADI in association with The Lab Gallery Dublin. The show, A Different Republic, also includes artists Aideen Barry, Amanda Coogan and Corban Walker, as well as an accompanying essay by Nathan O'Donnell. The show runs till February the 5th, with a talk by the artists on February 1st. The Land Where Nothing Is consists of a film projection with eleven poems, with accompanying audio as well as one large window text, to be read from outside. 

Film still from The Land Where Nothing Is

Info below taken from Dublin City Arts Office website, more  on the rest of the work, artists and the project can be found here.

Photograph property of Lab Gallery Dublin.

'Suzanne Walsh’s work is a set of concrete poetry made from fragments of lines from the poems of both Thomas McDonagh and Francis Ledwidge as well as comments collected from online Irish Facebook groups that discuss housing, environmental issues and wildlife identification. Linking these is the sound of the bittern, due to its connection to McDonagh and Ledwidge, a bird that is currently extinct in Ireland. McDonagh translated the poem 'The Yellow Bittern' (Cathal Bui Mac Giolla Ghunna) from Irish to English. After his execution his friend Francis Ledwidge wrote a poem 'Lament for Thomas McDonagh' that begins 'He shall not hear the bittern cry'. The poems question exclusion, identity and existence in today's Ireland.'

November 17 - February 05 2017

'A Different Republic explores universal human rights in a year of commemorations, being both the centenary of 1916 and the 20 year anniversary of the Irish government’s landmark report of the Commission on the Status of People with Disabilities ‘A Strategy for Equality’. Fire Station Artists’ Studios and Arts & Disability Ireland in partnership with The LAB Gallery are delighted to present this new work that reflects on the current state of the nation from different perspectives.

This exhibition marks the final exhibition in the LAB Gallery’s programme for 2016 which saw a series of new commissions responding to ideas of commemoration developed for the gallery by artists Bridget O’Gorman, John Beattie, Sabina MacMahon, John Byrne, Chad Keveny and Jane Locke in collaboration with research partners including the ESB Centre for the Study of Irish Art, the National Gallery of Ireland, the National Museum of Ireland and MA Art Research Collaboartion iadt.

Audio description, speech to text and Irish Sign Language will be available at the preview. Audio description and additional audio information will be available throughout the exhibition using Discovery Pens this service is useful for audiences with visual impairments.'

Photograph property of Lab Gallery Dublin.

Review and mentions of show:

Frieze magazine, Critics Guide: Dublin 24 November, Gemma Tipton, can be read here 

Destiny and the Republic, Irish Times review, Aidan Dunne, December 20. Can be read here

Click for your art but be discerning, Culture Review Irish Times, Gemma Tipton. Read here. 

Photo from Gallery Weekend performance, reading of poetry with processed audio along with Amanda Coogan, photograph by Jennie Guy

The Skin Between Us - response to Alice Maher 'The Diviner'

I created a spoken word/written piece as a response to The Diviner, this work is to be found on Fallowmedia website here. 

'The Diviner' was part of a recent Alice Maher exhibition in The Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin called 'The Glorious Maids of the Charnal House, and it ran from June 2nd to July 2nd. More info on the exhibition can be found here. 

Listen, Hissen, Hessin!

Performed in the Irish Museum of Modern art with Hissen sound group, as a response to the work of Carol Rama. 

'Performed by six Dublin based visual artists working under the aegis of Hissen, featuring Karl Burke, Jessica Conway, Teresa Gillespie, Jonathan Mayhew, Suzanne Walsh and Lee Welch. This was their first public performance as a six-piece experimental sound group.'

Listen, Hissen, Hessin! at IMMA – Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. Photography by Louis Haugh.

Some short samples of a recording of the event can be found here

More on the event and Carol Rama can be found

More photos from the event are here

Listen, Hissen, Hessin! at IMMA – Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. Photography by Louis Haugh.

My score for 'Sustain Decay' book, which we were invited to contribute to for Void Point Press. The scores are 'of' the IMMA improvisation. Publication link here. 

Performing with Gorse, for International Literature Festival May 27

I will be performing spoken word at an event with Gorse journal, at a secret location on May 27, along with Maria Fusco, Kimberley Campenello, and Robert Herbert McClean. 

Tickets are 5 euros and available here. 

More information can be found here

Proposition - An Art of Ethics - Burren College of Art

Recent performance of my All the Beast text at the Burren College of Art. I also met writer Iain Biggs during the symposium and did an impromptu version of ancient ballad 'Tam Lin', which forms part of his research, as part of his presentation. 

Photo by Vivienne Dick. 

Info on symposium (taken from Burren College of Art) 

Proposition: an Art of Ethics is a two day symposium which will take place at the Burren College of Art on Friday 11th and Saturday 12th March 2016. The event is supported by Clare County Council, NUI Galway and the Burren College of Art and is co-organised by Michaële Cutaya, Katherine Waugh and Conor McGrady (Dean of Academic Affairs Burren College of Art).

Participants include:  Iain Biggs, David Burrows, Vivienne Dick, Maria Kerin, Glenn Loughran, Seamus McGuinness, Aislinn O'Donnell, Ciaran Smyth, Susan Stenger, Judith Stewart, Suzanne Walsh.

"Spinoza's ethics has nothing to do with a morality; he conceives it as an ethology, that is, as a composition of fast and slow speeds, of capacities for affecting and being affected on this plane of immanence. That is why Spinoza calls out to us in the way he does: you do not know beforehand what good or bad you are capable of; you do not know beforehand what a body or a mind can do, in a given encounter, a given arrangement, a given combination."
Gilles Deleuze Spinoza:Practical Philosophy

This symposium gathers together artists, theorists and curators for two days of research and experimentation. All contributors have been invited to engage through their practice with ideas relating to a conception of ethics which differs substantially from dominant notions of morality. The starting point of the symposium – its founding 'proposition' – is philosopher Gilles Deleuze's reading of Spinoza, given Spinoza's extensive influence on recent artistic practice and thought around the 'ethical' in art. For Deleuze, Spinoza's ethics was a "a long affair of experimentation" which re-conceptualised the relationship between life, thought and practice, and this symposium will attempt to foster such an ethos of experimentation in its content and structure– proposing ethics as a methodology in contrast to the rigid principles of morality. The many nuanced and singular methodologies required in artistic practice will be addressed in a variety of presentational formats by the invited participants: from art and music, film and writing to conversation itself. A continuous dynamic of responsiveness and discussion will be facilitated between both participants and attendees. Spontaneous forays into the surrounding countryside will also be considered.

In 'Towards an Aesthetics of Ethics' (Whitechapel/MIT Documents of Contemporary Art, Ethics, 2015), Walead Beshty’s notes:

“While moral criteria are always external to the circumstances to which they are applied, the ethical is immanent to the site of its deployment […]A turn to ethics is a turn to the affirmative question of art, not art as negation, allegory or critique, but the description of an art that operates directly upon the world it is situated in; it is a definition of art that is not at all premised on representation.”

Nietzsche asked "What is the mode of existence of the person who utters a given proposition?” and this symposium will take what is often seen as the "minor" tradition of ethical thought, an ethics of immanent practice, as its foundational proposition, allowing in turn a multiplicity of other propositions to take shape and develop over two days.

More info here.