"Empty Nests" (2022) - Digital Collage - Anthony D Kelly From the Amazing Migracje/Migration Project.

"Empty Nests" (2022) - Digital Collage - Anthony D Kelly

"Travel to the island of Achill which hangs in the dark waters of the Atlantic, off the stark and wind beaten coasts of northwest Mayo. Bring yourself along to the foot of Slievemore mountain, you will find a deserted village there.

This abandoned settlement stands as a remnant, a scar, and a memorial site; one of many strewn across this county and country. Each site is a stark reminder of times in Ireland, that due to famine, as well as social and political pressures, survival was intensely difficult for most and truly impossible for some.

Elsewhere in Mayo, evidence of potato ridges rise high up on hillsides in areas which are now devoid of settlement. These areas were once so populous, that settlers resorted to cultivating their crops at awkward altitudes for lack of space.

When you stand in these once lively landscapes now, they feel haunted somehow. Indeed, our ancestors often held “Living Wakes” with their loved ones, before going to the docks; as they knew that they would never return.

In mid-June of this year the central statistics office announced that there are now five million people living in the Republic of Ireland. Yet records show that since the 18th century between nine and ten million people born in Ireland have emigrated away. Many of my own generation chose to move abroad as the impacts of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 sent shockwaves throughout Irish society.

We are a nation of emigrants, and we have left in many waves.

In the contemporary discourse on migration, immigration and displacement there tends to be a heavy focus on countries of arrival. This shifts our perspectives away from the realities of what might be left behind. Yes, those who arrive in a new country are often taking flight from dire situations such as war, famine and oppression. Yet, just like our ancestors who fled, they are also leaving behind loved ones, family, friends, communities, favourite meals, old stories, familiar words, much loved songs, childhood bedrooms, streets, homes, and empty nests."

For more of Marta Janik's amazing work blast off to: www.planetmarta.com

For more about the Birr Vintage and Arts Festival visit: https://www.birrvintageweek.com

For more from the amazing venue in Warsaw check out: Pałacyk Konopackiego

WORKSHOP ANNOUNCEMENT - MIGRACJE/ MIGRATION COLLAGE WORKSHOPS - Monday 1st August @ 2pm-4pm & Wed 3rd August, @ 2pm- 4pm - The Arts Hub, The Courthouse Yard, Townsend Street, Birr, Co.Offaly.

WORKSHOP ANNOUNCEMENT

MIGRACJE/ MIGRATION COLLAGE WORKSHOPS

I can't wait to return to the town of Birr, County Offaly to take part in the upcoming MIGRACJE/ MIGRATION Exhibition. Not to mention feast on the delicous breakfast pancakes served at the towns wonderful Tin Jug Studio; and but of course to enjoy all of the celebrations taking place for this years fabulous Birr Vintage Week and Arts Festival.

This year I am delighted to be delivering two seperate collage workshops alongside the amazing Marta Janik.

WORKSHOP TIMES:

Monday 1st August 2pm-4pm & Wed 3rd, 2pm- 4pm

LOCATION:

The Arts Hub, The Courthouse Yard, Townsend Street, Birr, Co.Offaly.

PRICE:

€10 (Per workshop)

REGISTER:

To register for this event, or any of the other fantastic workshops visit: https://www.birrvintageweek.com/visual-arts-workshops

We warmly invite you to join us in exploring your own responses to timely topic of Migration through the wonderful medium of collage.

We encourage you to bring along any photographs, images, magazines that you would like to work with or include in your collage. We will have additional material but it is always good to use things that are personal to you.

For more of the wonderful work of Marta Janik - Collage blast off to: www.planetmarta.com

(Workshop Image Credit: Anthony D Kelly Visual Art - Freeform Trouble & Marta Janik - Collage collaboration.)

Upcoming Exhibition: "MIGRACJE/MIGRATION" From July 29 - August 7, 2022 - at the 54th Vintage Week and the Arts Festival, Birr, Ireland, AND Praga Cultural Center in Praga-Północ, Warsaw, Poland

Image Credit: Marta Janik - Collage

🔸🔹🔸UPCOMING EXHIBITION: MIGRACJE/MIGRATION🔸🔹🔸

Less than two weeks to go!!!!

Running from: July 29 - August 7, 2022

Venues: 54th Vintage Week and the Arts Festival (Birr Vintage Week & Arts Festival) in Birr, Ireland AND Praga Cultural Center in Praga-Północ in Warsaw.

I am so excited to take part in this fantastic exhibition on the timely topic of Migration. This exhibition is curated by the one and only Marta Janik.

The works will be presented during the 54th Vintage Week and the Arts Festival (Birr Vintage Week & Arts Festival) in Birr, Ireland, on July 29 - August 7, 2022, and simultaneously at the Praga Cultural Center in Praga-Północ in Warsaw. Both exhibitions will be outdoor in the open air.

Made possible by: Caroline Conway and the Birr Vintage Week & Arts Festival.

Supported by: Arts Council Ireland, CreativeIrl, Offaly County Council and the Irish Embassy in Poland (Zielono mi. Ambasada Irlandii w Polsce)

TO CHECK OUT THE PARTICIPATING ARTISTS AND TO READ MARTA'S WONDERFUL STATEMENT JUST LOOK BELOW.

Curator: Marta Janik

Artists:

Lou Beach (USA) | Jerome Bertrand (Kanada/Canada) | Yuliia Fareniuk (Ukraina/Ukraine)

Maria Filek (Polska/Poland)| Una Gildea (Irlandia/Ireland) | Domenico Goi (Włochy/Italy)

Anthony D. Kelly (Irlandia/Ireland) | Denis Kollasch (Niemcy/Germany) | Sherry Parker (USA)

Silvio Severino (Brazylia/Brazil) | Maryna Siliakova (Ukraina/Ukraine) | Steve Tierney (Australia) | Tanja Ulbrich (Hiszpania/Spain)

"Since February 24, the eyes of the whole world have been turned towards Ukraine, which was brutally attacked by Russia on that date. The UN Refugee Agency reported in early May that more than 6 million Ukrainian citizens have already fled their homeland to other countries, attempting to escape from the war.

The history of the world is the history of migration; and this is a phenomenon which increasingly affects each of us, in almost every corner of the Earth. People migrate for many reasons, some in search of peace and security, and others to earn more money and live better lives.

Often individuals and families are forced to move due to political and economic pressures and instability, and unfortunately as we see more often these days, a deteriorating climate.

Others simply go on the road because they are seeking out themselves and their place on this earth.

Nor is migration a uniquely human phenomenon, as it can be found throughout nature in the plant and animal kingdoms. Some birds can travel up to ten thousand kilometers at once, and a single dandelion seed will be carried on the wind for several kilometers! All in service of survival, exploration, and a better life.

The topic of migration is as broad as it is interesting, and it touches every living being; this surely encourages a timely investigation and reflection.

Collage is a process of fragmentation and recombination, pieces are seperated from their original images, finding their way from different places to make up something new and beautiful. In this way Collage is both an apt technique and an accurate metaphor for the experience of migration.

When we think in this way we realize that through migratory processes our countries and communities themselves are constantly evolving Collages of experience.

If we dare to look deeply enough we realise that we are each a Collage of experience. For those of us who live with migrants, and those of us who have migrated – either geographically or within our imaginations. We rise to new problems, and new challenges. We learn, we grow, we ask questions. „What does it mean to be at home?”, „What does it mean to be a stranger?”, „What does the word "homeland" mean?”.

Random elements appear in our lives from which we build meanings. Like in a collage. And from here it is only a step to the migration that each of us takes after all. Migrating inside ourselves. This is a one-of-a-kind, most personal journey.

As part of this project we invited an artist from Ukraine (Yuliia Fareniuk, a member of Kyiv Collage Collective), a war refugee, to come to Birr for the duration of the festival, and who will conduct workshops with the towns residents, joining with the people of the town and sharing the experience of creating a collage mural with them somewhere in the town environment."

For more of Marta Janik's amazing work blast off to: www.planetmarta.com

For the line up at this years Birr Vintage and Arts Festival visit: https://www.birrvintageweek.com/programme

For more from the amazing venue in Warsaw check out: Pałacyk Konopackiego

New Work - "A Monument To Dreaming Together" for Empty Columns are a Place to Dream @ The 53rd Annual Birr Vintage Arts Week, from the 14th-20th of August 2021

"A Monument to Dreaming Together" (2021) - Digital Collage - Anthony D Kelly

My piece in response to the “Empty Columns Are a Place to Dream" project in Birr, Co. Offaly, Ireland, as part of the Birr Vintage Week & Arts Festival.

See my statement below:

“Though we do not wholly believe it yet, the interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world.” - James Baldwin

To dream is to embark on a ubiquitous and mystical human experience. We each engage in nightly expeditions into the vast wildness of our own inner expanse, embarking on nocturnal journeys through the uncharted hinterlands of the self. Contact with this emergent space often churns forth inspirational ideas, creative insights and integrative experiences, possessed of a form of deep intelligence that is unfamiliar in our waking lives. Recent sleep research has even implicated dreaming as an integral element in the mind’s inherent capacity to process and heal from traumatic events.

Dreaming is also synonymous with the ability to look beyond, and to envision new and better futures, both personal and collective. Indeed the simple statement of “I have a dream…” evokes the powerful words of Martin Luther King Jr. on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, his speech itself an act of collective dreaming that opened new pathways for discourse and lived possibilities. Also in listening to the history of Birr, there is much evidence of the town as a powerful site for collective dreaming. For example, the famous Leviathan of Parsonstown; a literal device constructed for the purpose of seeing far beyond our own world, and peering into the unknown heavens. And the Cáin Adomnáin or Law of The Innocents that came about as a result of the Synod of Birr in 697AD. This agreement was a prototype for the Geneva Convention and the first such accord to protect innocents during wartime, envisioning and enacting a better future.

Our world today is one of many crises. Humanity is struggling, as a people we are deeply troubled, fractured, isolated, grief stricken and traumatised. This is why now, possibly more than ever, we need new sites and spaces to gather, heal and relearn the ancient art of dreaming together.

All works from this outstanding project will be published in a book from Kolaj Magazine to mark the exhibition this can be preordered here.

Upcoming Exhibition - Empty Columns are a Place to Dream @ The 53rd Annual Birr Vintage Arts Week, from the 14th-20th of August 2021

Various Sites in Birr Town Centre, Birr, County Offaly,

The 53rd Annual Birr Vintage Arts Week,

From the 14th-20th of August 2021

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“Empty Columns” Panel Discussion Tuesday 17th August at 7.30pm, Birr Theatre & Arts Centre

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I am absolutely thrilled to be taking part in The Empty Columns are a Place to Dream Project as part of The 53rd Annual Birr Vintage Arts Week this August. This project curated by Ric Kasini Kadour will feature the work of 20 international collage artists, responding to an empty column which sits at the centre of Parsons Square, Birr, County Offaly. Through this project we explore monuments at large as focal points for communities, ideas and intentions; and their sometimes oppressive, often contentious, and potentially constructive roles as we move forward into the future.

Ric writes: “Monuments are a particular type of public art that plays an important role in the psyche of a community. A stitch that binds geography to history, monuments express community values. They say, ‘This is who we are. This is what we want the future to remember.’ They commemorate the dead and recall the past. But unlike headstones, monuments are communal by design, collective expressions of grief and remembrance.”

For more on the project from Ric Kasini Kadour visit here.

For more on Birr Vintage Arts Week visit here.