Askeaton Contemporary Arts

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Askeaton Contemporary Arts is a non-profit art organisation based in Askeaton, County Limerick. Founded by Michele Horrigan, it is an artist-led initiative that organises residencies and exhibitions, often taking the daily life of the town and region as a theme. An artist residency programme, ‘Welcome to the Neighbourhood’, hosts Irish and international artists in Askeaton each summer. This programme has facilitated artists from around the world to realise projects in places such as a hair salon, petrol station and seventeenth century Hellfire Club, amongst many other sites.

In 2014, ACA launched an independent publishing house specialising in artists’ books, ‘A.C.A. PUBLIC’ and in 2020, an online media channel, ‘Only in Askeaton’. In 2022, a residency house was established in Askeaton as a dedicated space for artists to stay and work on longer-term projects. The site was once a home for the keepers of Beeves Rock lighthouse in the Shannon Estuary and is now a cultural hub for studio practice, events and exhibitions.

Welcome to the Neighbourhood Residency

Askeaton Contemporary Arts hosts an annual artists residency and events programme, welcoming Irish and international artists to the town since 2006. The residency, titled 'Welcome to the Neighbourhood' takes place each summer and is embedded in the locality, with artists researching, producing and presenting artworks in the town. Artworks have been made and exhibited in a variety of spaces including hair salons, World War II fortifications, the mediaeval castle ruins and the Franciscan Friary. A range of communities have also been engaged in the making of these projects, from seaweed cutters, to card players; local publicans, to dairy farmers. The coinciding public programme has found inspiration in Askeaton and its environs as a form of both critical and celebratory place making.

Key artworks and projects

In addition to the annual ‘Welcome to the Neighbourhood’ residency and public programme, ACA regularly organises and presents public programmes throughout Ireland as well as internationally including bringing their project to wide and diverse audiences in New York, Vancouver, Amsterdam, San Sebastian and elsewhere.

Key artworks and projects since 2006 include:

Magdalena Jitrik - 2009

While on residency in Askeaton, Jitrik spent time making a small painting that, according to curator Adriano Pedrosa, ‘is a splendid abstract geometric composition; one can see the same mosaic of multicoloured slanted rectangles forming a larger, again not so orthogonal square, which in turn is intersected by a trapezoid figure, offering a feast for the formal connoisseur.’ In an accompanying video, the painting appears in unexpected locations including Askeaton’s Fransiscan Friary. The video soundtrack is composed by Jitrik’s band, Orquestra Roja (Red Orchestra). The piece later featured in the 2011 Istanbul Biennial.

Berndnaut Smilde - 2009

In his initial research for the ‘Welcome to the Neighbourhood’ residency, Smilde looked up Askeaton in Google Street View and was directed to Askeaton, Wisconsin, USA. He then screen grabbed the image of the first building he found in the American Askeaton, a nondescript barn. On residency he installed a scaled-up print of the barn as a freestanding sculpture on the way into the town. The hope for the work was that Google would eventually come to document the town and might pick up this image, meaning that on Google Street View, the building would seem to exist in both Askeatons. Smilde’s sculpture was captured and today still appears on Google Maps.

Louise Manifold - 2009

During the same group residency in 2009, Manifold collected stories of ‘spirit tales’ along the old road connecting Askeaton to Limerick City and made a video titled ‘Phantom’, together with a local coach driver. The work dramatically revives accounts of spectral or phantom coaches, said to have haunted the old roads of Limerick, featuring Askeaton man Michael McCarthy and stories handed down to him through the generations.

Alan Hughes - 2011

Set around the legacy of Second World War battlements along the Shannon Estuary, Hughes produced a video, audio and photographic installation while on residency in Askeaton, examining ideas of Irish neutrality. A sound work was produced from interviews made with former Local Security Force (LSF) and Local Defense Force (LDF) volunteers. As they each reflected on their lives and work during ‘The Emergency,’ their recollections overlap and interrupt eachother's accounts. Hughes subsequently photographed several pillboxes in West Limerick, small concrete structures that these men were once stationed in. The resulting installation shows the tensions between the politics of memory; social and political circumstance, as well as landscape and territory.

Ben Kinsley and Jessica Langley - 2012

Ben Kinsley and Jessica Langley sited five permanent plaques around Askeaton town in 2012. Each piece is based on hand-drawn maps made by Askeaton residents showing different features of the town centre and surrounding landscape as well as key landmarks and directions. These maps were then engraved on granite tablets and installed throughout the town.

The Hellfire Club 2012 The remains of a Hellfire Club are situated on an island on the River Deel in Askeaton. Established in the 1700s throughout Britain and Ireland, most Hellfire Clubs were soon outlawed. The Askeaton club was founded in 1738, and as the most westerly branch of the organisation, it may have lasted until the end of the eighteenth century. While salacious stories of outrageous rituals have long circulated about these meeting places, much is unknown about the nature of the Askeaton Hellfire Club. In 2012, artists Stephen Brandes, Diana Copperwhite, Tom Fitzgerald, Sean Lynch and Louise Manifold were commissioned by Michele Horrigan to respond to the Hellfire Club. New artworks were located throughout Askeaton, each engaging with the ruin as it exists in the day-to day life of the town.

Freek Wambacq - 2013 In eleven locations throughout Askeaton, Freek Wambacq made ‘An Askeaton Poem’, placing objects used by Foley artists to synthesise sound for TV and film into the everyday fabric of Askeaton, creating unexpected juxtapositions through their presence. These visual poems included ‘Earthslide in Bank of Ireland’ (electric toothbrush); ‘Gust of wind in Cois Sionna Credit Union’ (nylon cloth, bicycle); ‘Walking in Snow in the Tourist Information Office’ (boxes of cornflour); ‘Galloping horses in Ranahan’s Bar’ (halved coconut shells).

Susan MacWilliam - 2014 Susan MacWilliam’s IC ITE OID was an sculpture and audio work presented at the Franciscan Friary, interweaving Aldous Huxley’s seminal 1954 novel ‘The Doors of Perception’ with accounts of the Limerick Meteorite Fall of 1813. The following year, MacWilliam was commissioned to make a performance for the town’s St. Patrick’s Day parade that saw silver-clad performers march the parage route holding meteor-type orbs to the tune of Joe Meek's ‘Telstar’ performed by The Tornadoes (1962).

Adrian Duncan - various projects 2014 - 2023 Berlin-based Irish artist and writer Adrian Duncan has a longstanding relationship with ACA, starting in 2014. In 2022, Duncan participated in the ACA residency programme, continuing a long-term investigation into the cultural impact of Bungalow Bliss, a collection of affordable housing designs that resulted in thousands of new dwellings appearing in Irish towns and countryside starting in the 1970s. He grew up in one such house in Longford, and in 2022 published ‘Little Republics: The Story of Bungalow Bliss’ (Lilliput Press), examining the influence and effect the Irish bungalow has had on the housing market, the surrounding landscape, and the individual families who lived in them.

Following this, in a special partnership between ACA and the Irish Architectural Archive in Dublin, Duncan produced a solo exhibition ‘Little Republics – Preparations and Elements’ in 2023. Spread throughout the ground floor galleries and exterior courtyard of the IAA’s Merrion Square building, this large-scale body of work comprises a new series of sculptures, displays and archival documents, each relating to the cultural impact of the Bungalow Bliss housing phenomenon.

Saint Patrick’s Day Parades 2014 - 2016

ACA commissioned artists to join the local Askeaton Saint Patrick’s Day parade between 2014 and 2016. Horrigan describes the arts organisation as “just another part of the community alongside everyone else. Clubs and societies such as the Pioneers, girl scouts, resident groups, the boxing club and GAA, with activities such as the emergency services, Irish traditional music and dancing and hunting hounds all rubbing shoulders with the local tractor repair man, vintage cars and a loud brass band. For anyone who hasn’t been to a rural town on 17 March, it's worth mentioning that virtually anyone can turn up and join in, there is no pre-registration, and is far removed from the strict admission policies seen in parades in cities.”

Seanie Barron - various projects 2015 - 2022

For decades, Askeaton local Seanie Barron has been carving and shaping wood in his workshop. His carved walking sticks often take on surreal forms referencing seahorses, weasels, fists, foxes or swimmers. Many double as whistles, or incorporate found objects such as coins, bullets or animal bones.

In 2014, Horrigan curated an exhibition of Barron’s sticks at the Askeaton Civic Trust and published an accompanying catalogue.  Then director, John Hutchinson, of the Douglas Hyde Gallery at Trinity College Dublin saw the catalogue and requested to show an extensive survey of Barron’s wood carving practice, titled ‘Sticks’ at the Douglas Hyde Gallery 2 in 2015. Throughout 2022, a partnership between ACA South Tipperary Arts Centre resulted in a touring exhibition of Barron’s recent work, from Clonmel to Askeaton for ‘Welcome to the Neighbourhood’ and later at the Eigse Michael Harnett Festival in Newcastle West.

Ramon Kassam - 2016 During the 2016 ‘Welcome to the Neighborhood’ residency, Kassam explored the painted surfaces of his temporary workspace, a former barbershop, to create three new paintings, later displayed in the building’s upstairs rooms. Kassam also pressed a row of thumb tacks along the side of the building’s exterior to make the structure itself appear as an artists’ canvas from one side.

Tina O’Connell and Neal White - 2017 Tina O’Connell and Neal White collaborated on a large-scale installation for Askeaton Community Hall. ‘Study for a Pavilion: Askeaton’ combined elements of national identity and material culture in order to imagine an art biennale-style pavilion dedicated to the life and geography of Askeaton itself. This expansive work incorporated a geodesic dome and a video re-imagining of Sean Keating’s now-destroyed mural from the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. In an accompanying series of digitally manipulated photographs, stolen and lost sculptures by Helen Chadwick, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth appeared as apparitions or ghostly figures at twilight in public spaces around Askeaton.

The Algae Summit 2017 The Algae Summit was an international conference taking place in Askeaton and the nearby Shannon River Estuary in June 2017, initiated by Belgian artist Filip Van Dingenen.

Askeaton and its outlying territories is an acknowledged centre of seaweed cultivation, historically used as the primary agricultural fertiliser in the region. Van Dingenen repeatedly visited Askeaton to research this history, seaweed cutting and the still-unresolved nature of harvesting rights in Ireland, along with wider ecological concerns. A focal point of the summit was a two-night engagement held on uninhabited Coney Island in the middle of the Shannon Estuary, with the aim of creating a response to these wide-ranging issues. Van Dingenen further presented elements of his research at the Lofoten Biennial in Norway in 2017 and the Casablanca Biennial in 2018.

The Expanded Field - 2018 Co-curated by ACA and Lismore Castle Arts, ‘The Expanded Field’ was an exhibition, nationwide public programme and series of artist residencies in 2017-2018. Aiming to find new methodologies and reflections on the urgent issues faced by our landscapes and ecologies, artists Stuart Whipps, The Center for Land Use Interpretation, Olivia Plender, The Domestic Godless, Superfolk and Filip Van Dingenen all developed new artworks. Using Askeaton in Limerick and Lismore in Waterford as initial bases, ‘The Expanded Field’ artists found and highlighted unexpected and rarely explored resolutions and terrains.

wild recuperations. material from below - 2020

This longform podcast was realised during the early COVID-19 national lock-down in Ireland. Hosted by 2020 ACA writer in residence, Suza Husse and co-produced by ACA and Project Arts Centre, these conversations explore how artists can work with archives, ecology and marginalised histories. Speakers include artists Michele Horrigan, Emma Wolf-Haugh, Sean Lynch, and curator Lívia Páldi.

A.C.A. PUBLIC

A.C.A. PUBLIC is an independent publishing house exploring the many relationships between art and the public realm. Established in 2014, A.C.A. PUBLIC has produced over a dozen titles, each placing an emphasis on artists and writers who have an interest in site-specific work and placemaking, and with practitioners who urgently consider themes of the environment and societal structures.

Publications include:

The ACA Public (compendium) was released in 2016, following a decade of public programming in the town of Askeaton. The publication outlines how and why art is made in the town with contributions by Valerie Connor, Mike Cooter, Wayne Daly, Steve Maher, Susan MacWilliam, Curt Riegelnegg, Nuno Sacramento and Freek Wambacq, edited by Sean Lynch, Michele Horrigan and Wayne Daly.

Men Who Eat Ringforts was first published in 2020 (with reprints in 2021 and 2022). This book includes an essay by environmentalist Sinéad Mercier, discussing the legal and moral complexities surrounding ringforts, and fieldwork from artist Michael Holly with folklorist Eddie Lenihan, exploring many sites of resonance in County Clare. Large format aerial imagery and historical maps licensed from Ordnance Survey Ireland detail changes to these landscapes over recent decades. This book was co-published with Gaining Ground, a public art programme based in Clare.

John Carson’s what not – selected artworks and ephemera 1975–96 is the outcome of an extensive archiving project starting in 2019. This publication traces the work of Northern Irish artist John Carson over twenty years. Featuring a keynote essay by London-based critic and writer Chris Fite-Wassilak, this book details aspects of Carson’s early and mid-career, and his enthusiastic endeavours to make a socially-orientated art, encompassing conceptual art, everyday life, immersive popular culture, and storytelling with insightful wit and humour.

The Cure by Catalina Lozano, a Colombian curator and independent writer based in Mexico City, was released in 2018. Lozano writes about encounters and experiences that mediate the boundary between life and death, in order to think about healing as a way to navigate the conflicting relationships between nature and culture, the visible and the invisible, and the material and sentient.

Only in Askeaton

During the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, Askeaton Contemporary Arts launched ‘Only in Askeaton’, a media channel that commissions, investigates and showcases contemporary art made in or relating to the locale. The short film, ‘Only in Askeaton: Seanie Barron’ was made under the direction of filmmaker Michael Holly, and features the work of the celebrated local stick maker. It has been screened as part of the Fastnet Film Festival and Cork International Film Festival, where it won the audience award and was longlisted for an Academy Award.

References

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