💥✂️UPCOMING COLLAGE FESTIVAL: Intentional Selection at The Linenhall Arts Centre- Running from Saturday June 8th – September 6th 2024 ✂️💥

Opening Reception: Saturday 8th June at 5pm.

Runs: June 8th – September 6th 2024

The Linenhall Arts Centre, Linenhall Street, Castlebar, Ireland, F23 AN24

I am absolutely thrilled to announce the upcoming “Intentional Selection” Collage festival launching at the Linenhall Arts Centre next Saturday the 8th of June and running right until the end of Summer.

This festival will feature an exhibition of over 30 of the best collage artists practicing in Ireland today. A series of workshops catering to a wide variety of audiences, a screening of collage animation, a panel discussion and regular monthly meetings of the Connacht Collage Collective hosted at the Linenhall.

We invite you throughout this Summer to engage with the medium of collage and to join us as a welcome participant in all that this vibrant and exciting medium has to offer.
Full Programme Coming Soon.

From Anthony D Kelly:
“Collage has a rich history spanning from the advent of paper making in China in approximately 100AD; through being considered as a form relief sculpture during the renaissance period due to its layering and depth; being utilized as a foundational Cubist, Surrealist and Dadaist technique during the early twentieth century, featuring in the later Pop Art and Fluxus movements; to becoming the vibrant, versatile and engaging contemporary art practice that it is today.

To honour the versatility of this medium the Intentional Selection Festival has no unifying theme, but instead offers the audience an introduction to the range and possibility of collage as it is being practiced in Ireland today.“

Featured Artists:
Adrian & Shane, Adrienne Geoghegan, Alan Murphy, Aleksandra Schulte, Anthony D Kelly,
Aoife Carroll, Betty Gannon, Carol White, Cas Mc Carthy, Celina Buckley
Cheryl Murphy Kelly, Clare Walsh, Ciara O Connor, Colin Eaton, David Ryan, Derval Dunford
Eleanor Jones, Eve Kimmerling, Frantic Sally, Gavin Mc Crea, GUBU Man
Izabela Szczutkowska, Kate Hodmon, Mags Duffy, Micheal Mc Laughlin, Michelle Granville, Padraig Spillane, Paul Mac Cormaic, Red Fox Press, Ruby Staunton, Sarah Deane, Silvio Severino,
Sorcha Mc Namara, Tatyana Feeney, Tom Doig, Una Gildea, Valerie Asiimwe Amani.

Working hard behind the scenes have been the curatorial panel of:
Anthony D Kelly, Silvio Severino, Una Gildea.
Special thanks to the Linenhall Art Centre, Deirdre Melvin & Mayo Arts Office.

For more from the Linenhall Arts Centre Click Here.

Upcoming Festival: "NEW REALITY: Contemporary Collage in Ireland"- Friday the 9th of September – Saturday the 1st of October 2022 -at Market House Craftworks, Cappoquin, Co. Waterford, Ireland.

🔸🔹🔸UPCOMING FESTIVAL: NEW REALITY: CONTEMPORARY COLLAGE IN IRELAND”🔸🔹🔸

Opening Reception: Friday 9th of September 6pm - 8pm

New Reality Festival: Friday 9th of September - Sunday 11th of September 2022

Exhibition Running from: Friday the 9th of September – Saturday the 1st of October 2022

I am absolutley thrilled to be invited to take part in the upcoming - 'New Reality’ Contemporary Collage in Ireland festival and exhibition. Organised by the wonderful Silvio Serverino, Una Gildea, Jane Jermyn and the Market House Craftworks.

The ‘New Reality’ exhibition opens with a Festival on the weekend of the 9th-11th Sept. The festival will feature a series of workshops a the Parochial Hall, Cappoquin, P51 VY40. Each hosted by mega talented master collage artists, Marta Janik, Una Gildea, Tom Doig, Alan Murphy and Tatyana Feeny.

I am also inviting you to join me in a “Monster” workshop hosted by truly on Saturday the 10th of September at 14.30 -16.30. Workshops come at a small cost and booking is recommended either through Eventbrite or by phone 087-2187962.

Other events will include live music by 'Mamacha & the Forest of Sound', fabulous screenings of Moving Collage, a talk by the man himself Sean Hillen (Sean Hillen Artist), subject of the award winning documentary "Tomorrow is Saturday".

The exhibition itself will be open to the public from 9th Sept - 1st October at Market House Craftworks The Square, Green Street, Cappoquin, Co. Waterford, P51 KD37.

For more on this rich and amazing event visit: https://www.instagram.com/new_reality_festival/

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.