I like to make people stop using their eyes so much and pay more attention to the other senses like sound and touch. Touch is mostly noticeable as a sensation on your skin or your body when you are walking through a space, how you feel in a space. This is also the way you feel in a landscape. Sound can makes this more obvious. When you can’t see well because of low light levels or when there is not much to look at, your peripheral vision takes over and you’re more aware of where you are. It just happens. Joan Edlis

While I have to admit I didn’t get a chance to see much of the recent Kilkenny Arts festival, I think some you know that I was involved in a group exhibition,  the Shankill Castle International Arts Festival 2010 organised by Phoebe Cope at Shankhill Castle, Paulstown, Co. Kilkenny. Such a lot of great work was on display so here’s a few of my favourites below. My thanks to Phoebe, Reuben, Elizabeth and Geoffrey for inviting me to exhibit too and to directors Kevin Hughes and Pat Kenny for including my work in the film exhibition.

The UK based Centre for Recent Drawing had a great and varied exhibition – all centered on trees. I wish I had more time to look at all the works… Joan Edlis created something I wish I had thought of – a map book with a small video panel inserted and attached headphones. Putting on the headphones the simple installation transported you to a audio-visual walk in the forest that was marked on the map. It reminded me of the magic book in CS Lewis book The Voyage of the Dawn Treader where a character finds a book whose images come to life. What a great way to connect place at a distance with sound as well as images. Joan creates all manner of works here, in reference to landscape at www.joanedlis.com. Actually I’ve been trying to concentrate on sound more recently for my film work – I’ve been  trying to walk along in wooded areas with eyes shut – there really is a racket going on in nature most of the time, although one has to be careful not to trip.

Below is was a wonderful short created by Reuben called Asspirationdonkey’s admire good art as much as we do, didn’t you know. The paintings of New York on the silage bales are Reubens too – it was part of a very imaginative installation with a variety of found and discarded objects that recreated New York in Paulstown. Can only hope that next year, this festival will be included in the official Kilkenny Arts Festival programme, I expect more would have enjoyed such fine film, installations and paintings – and the Castle and grounds are amazing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKOo-vIUhjM&feature=player_embedded

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eco film festivals in Ireland and afar

15 August 2010
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Part of my interest in creating films with an ecological theme is also observing how such films can travel, online and across the world. Film festivals dedicated solely to ecological concerns are a recent enough phenomena and its interesting that many are  mimicking the short online film and social networked formats that you see used [...]

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the love motel and kissing frogs in Co. Offaly – art, ecology and biodiversity

2 August 2010
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My work attempts to blur the already ambiguous boundaries between environmental art and ecological research. When initiating a project I often solicit technological or theoretical information from field biologists, or zoological organizations. In other cases, I have collaborated with scientists to create a work. As an artist involved in wildlife preservation, global [...]

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Dog teaches Ireland about permanent close to nature foresty

10 June 2010
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Some of you may have heard my news? I will be continuing my experiments in film-making about Close to Nature permanent forestry on a different level. I will be starting a PhD in film practice and theory on ecology at NCAD (National College of Art & Design, Ireland) this September!
Just to recap, I started working [...]

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Art, a Clown and Environment talks in Kilkenny and Dublin

24 May 2010
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Ever wondered what it might be like to live in a city that encourages people to reach their fullest creative potential?  What would such a city look like?  How would it feel to live in such a city?  David Engwicht, artist, clown, writer and street philosopher, unpacks what [...]

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Performance artist creates movement portraits of 10,000 plants and animals

22 May 2010
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I am creating an archive of movement portraits of 10,000 plants and animals. This research lies at the intersection of embodied cognition, phenomenology, natural history, and performance. The Somatic Natural History Archive is a work of conceptual art and experiential geography research. Following direct physical encounters with plants and animals, I [...]

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Volcanoes, windmills and keeping the demons away from the rice

2 May 2010

The wind-vane will sound and, in its perennial turning, emit a prayer:
a dialogue between the machine and the guardian gods of the rice paddy.
Davide Sebastian, 2009

Just came across this short non-narrated video work by Italian film artist Davide Sebastian. I don’t know what the title means Oryza Sativa (can anyone translate?) but [...]

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Your arts practice and Earth Day?

22 April 2010
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The Ten Commandments (2007) ‘What is new about this? I say; nothing really, except underlining that environment is a question of morality. Humanity in our time, should be expressed in our relationship with nature and our environment. Concerning the survival of mankind, it is the most acute moral battle we must [...]

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art, ecology and permanent forests in Ireland update

17 April 2010
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Image: Slovenian mixed species, non clear fell forest – what my Holly Wood forest in Co. Carlow will someday look like

When I went to Slovenia last Sept for the 20th anniversary of Pro Silva Europe and met with foresters from 27 member countries, I had little idea that I would be six months [...]

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Drawing flowers to visualise sustainability in your area

11 April 2010
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This entry is part 4 of 4 in the series eco music

‘The aim of the drawing is to move the discussion of sustainability from a very general and abstract opinion, to more direct prisms of interaction between people. In that, the experiment is in watching the move from problem calling to solutions, creations, or expressions. The main element is the “flower of [...]

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Ecoartnotebook by Cathy Fitzgerald is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at www.cathyfitzgerald.ie