An international exhibition of sound and ceramics • Curated by Richard Carr, Kay Aplin and Joseph Young.

Opening Launch: Saturday 17 February at 3pm • Featuring performances by Joseph Young and Suzanne Walsh • The live performance by Joseph Young utilizes his custom-designed Sonic Baton instrument with which he ‘conducts’ field recordings gathered during a residency in Connemara, June 2023.

The live performance by Suzanne Walsh draws on text and audio in the exhibition, and also functions as an invocation to the Roman God Mithras. It uses instructions from the Mithras Liturgy, a text from approximately 100 AD, as well as field recordings taken by the artist in Brighton.

Followed by a wine reception. All welcome to attend.

Wexford Arts Centre in partnership with Wexford County Council Arts Department are pleased to present Edges, a group exhibition featuring work by Kay Aplin, Juss Heinsalu, Pille Kaleviste, Linda O’Keeffe, Patrick Tubin McGinley, Suzanne Walsh, Katharine West, and Joseph Young. The exhibition will run in the lower and upper gallery of Wexford Arts Centre from Tuesday 20 February to Thursday 21 March, 2024.

The exhibition at Wexford Arts Centre is the result of three separate artist residencies and one new commission. All of the artworks exhibited can be seen as works-in-progress or experimental iterations, made under tight time constraints and in response to place and site.

The first residency took place in April 2022 at The Ceramic House (supported by European funding) pairing two sound artists from Ireland, Linda O’Keeffe and Suzanne Walsh, with Estonian ceramists Juss Heinsalu and Pille Kaleviste. Over a period of four weeks, they worked together in pairs and the resulting exhibition Peripheries was shown as part of the Brighton Artists Open Houses festival.

The second residency at Interface in the Inagh Valley, Connemara in June 2023, saw Kay Aplin and Joseph Young exploring the Connemara landscape, accompanied by curator Richard Carr, in a series of walks and wanderings, gathering binaural sound recordings and plant, fossil, lichen specimens as they went.

The third residency took place at Watts Gallery and Artist Village, Surrey (Oct-Dec 2023), the former home of celebrated artist couple, George Frederic and Mary Watts. Here Aplin and Young explored a more personal take on encounters through partnership, both through the lens of their own relationship and the creation of The Ceramic House, their artist home, which was conceived and developed by Kay.

Finally, ceramic artist Katharine West (IE) and sound artist Patrick Tubin McGinley have selected pre-existing works to be displayed alongside each other, creating a dialogue in the gallery space and uncovering new ways of listening and viewing the material (clay) and the ephemeral (sound).

Richard Carr is an Artist-Curator currently living and working in Ireland.

His practice is rooted in a sonic sensibility and usually involves spending time within specific geographical, architectural and psychological landscapes. Sometimes, this can also involve a collaborative approach, bringing the life and work of diverse, international practitioners together.

He has been supported by numerous funding bodies including Culture Ireland, Creative Ireland, ArtLinks, ALAAO, and The Arts Council of Ireland. His work has featured as part of leading international programmes such as Culture Ireland’s GB18 programme in association with MOCA London, and their upcoming Zeitgeist Irland 24 showcase in association with Errant Sounds Berlin and The Embassy of Ireland in Germany. Alongside this, he has been invited to participate in EU funded initiatives such as ‘Archives of the Future’ in Poland and ‘PARTGO’ between various higher level institutions in Ireland, Hungary, Finland, and Estonia.

Joseph Young lives and works between Brighton, Berlin and Dublin. He is an Irish Research Council Scholar, for his practice-based PhD at SMARTlab UCD, Killruddery: Listening to the Archive (2019-2023).

Recent exhibitions include: The Destruction of Language (after Le Madame), Venice Architecture Biennale (2023); Circa Regna Tonat, SLEEPERTOWN, Ireland & Italy (2021-23); Make Futurism Great Again, Estorick Collection, UK (2018); The Missing Paintings, Towner Art Gallery, UK (2017); Singing the Castle to life, Lewes Castle, UK (2017); Revolution #10, House of Commons, UK (2015); What is the Sound of Protest?, Errant Bodies, Berlin (2015); The Garden Manifesto, Seoul Museum of Art (2014); Listening Ears, Tate Britain (2012).

Kay Aplin is an architectural ceramist, and has been creating site-specific commissions for the public realm and large-scale tiled installations since graduating from Chelsea College of Art in 1995. Kay works with microscopic imagery of natural objects to create highly textured wall-based porcelain compositions. Exhibitions include Indian Ceramics Triennial, Aveiro Ceramics Biennial, Kogei Triennial Kanazawa, British Ceramics Biennial and Collect, Saatchi Gallery. She is a member of the International Academy of Ceramics and selected member of the Craft Potters Association. In 2011, Kay initiated her award-winning project The Ceramic House, project space and living showcase of her work.

Linda O’Keeffe’s work merges equality, science, technology, ethics, society, and communication. Her project “Evolving Ourselves with Unnatural Selection,” supported by Creative Scotland and the SETI Institute, explores gene editing and climate adaptation through art and science. O’Keeffe’s installation “Hybrid Soundscapes I-IV,” part of the “Sounds Like Her” exhibition, reflects on renewable energy’s impact on rural areas, based on three years of research. This toured UK galleries from 2017-2020. Her album “Silent Spring” highlights field recordings and challenges perceptions of climate change soundscapes.

As the founder of Women in Sound Women on Sound (WISWOS), O’Keeffe promotes diversity in sound art. Recognized by the Arts Council of England in 2018, she traveled to Brazil, delivering talks and workshops, and released two albums. Her book “The Body in Sound, Music and Performance” (2022), features contributions from over 20 women globally. More at www.lindaokeeffe.com.

Juss Heinsalu is an Estonian artist based in Tallinn and Halifax, NS. His autonomous research-creation process explores the embodiment of life in clay, merging scientific hypothesis, mythological and ethnographic knowledge with material-based studio practice. Juss holds a degree in ceramics from the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA) and received his MFA at NSCAD University in Nova Scotia, Canada. He has actively participated in various projects and exhibitions across Europe, Asia and North America. He is also an associate professor and the head of the Craft Studies MA programme at EKA.

Estonian artist and curator Pille Kaleviste graduated in 2014 from the MA degree in ceramic art at the Estonian Academy of Arts. She is a member of the Estonian Artists’ Union and the Estonian Ceramicists Association. She has participated in group exhibitions and jury exhibitions, art residencies and symposiums. Her works are in various collections.

I express myself through the simplicity of colors and clean forms. I consider both the aesthetics of the form and the conceptual content to be important. Ceramics is an ancient art form that today opens up great opportunities to speak in the language of modern art.

Suzanne Walsh is a cross-disciplinary artist and writer from Wexford. They use primarily performative lectures, vocal explorations, audio/musical performances and text-based work to query ideas around human/non-human relationships and consensus reality, often drawing on the scientific world as well as more esoteric sources. They’ve published essays, and poetry in publications including Paper Visual Art Journal, Fallowmedia, gorse journal, and Winter Papers, as well as commissioned texts by institutions and artists. They’ve performed and shown/read work at galleries and festivals including Galerie Michaelastock Vienna, TENT Rotterdam, IMMA, The Butler Gallery Kilkenny, The Model Gallery Sligo, Between.Pomiędzy Poland, and The International Literature Festival. Their vocal performance work ‘BirdBecomeBird’ was recently acquired by the Arts Council for their collection.

Katharine West is an artist who works primarily in clay. Central to her work are phenomena associated with landscape, seascape and the human body.

Katharine West is a Fulbright Ireland Alumna, a graduate of NCAD, the School of Decorative Arts, Strasbourg and the NYSCC, Alfred University, USA. She is chair of ATU Galway’s BA in Art where she lectures in Ceramics, Fine Art and Creative Education. She is a member of the International Academy of Ceramics. Her work is made from her studio in Rosscahill, Co, Galway. Current work can be seen in ‘Monument’ at the Galway City Museum and ‘White Engenders Black’ Farmleigh Galleries, Phoenix Park, Dublin.

Patrick Tubin McGinley (AKA murmer) is an American-born sound, performance, and radio artist who has been based in Europe (now Estonia) since 1996. Since then he has been building a collection of found sounds and found objects that have become the basis of all his work. In 2002 he founded Framework, an organisation that produces a weekly field recording themed radio show, broad- and podcasting around the world. Alongside his sound, radio and film work, Patrick gives presentations, workshops, and performances based on the exploration of site-specific sound and sound as definition of space. In live performance his interest in field recording has developed into an attempt to integrate and resonate found sounds, found objects, specific spaces, and moments in time, in order to create a direct and visceral link with an audience and location.

Patrick’s work is about small discoveries and concentrated attention; it focuses on the framing of the sounds around us which normally pass through our ears unnoticed and unremarked, but which out of context become unrecognisable, alien and extraordinary: crackling charcoal, a squeaking escalator, a buzzing insect, or one’s own breath. He works equally with spaces, objects, resonances, and people in exploration of perception via attentive listening.

For further information on Edges contact Catherine Bowe- Curator, Wexford Arts Centre, Cornmarket, Wexford on +353 (0)53 91 23764 or catherine@wexfordartscentre.ie.

Edges is supported by Wexford County Council, i-Portunus and Open Gorey. Wexford Arts Centre is supported by the Arts Council and Wexford County Council.