What does it mean to leave home, return, and find a sense of belonging? This December, Sample-Studios, in partnership with Engage Art Studios Galway, invites audiences to discover Soft Shield People Carry Me On, the first solo exhibition by Connemara based multidisciplinary artist Bryony Hussey. Bringing together moving image, photography, ceramics, poetry and outmoded technologies, Hussey explores migration, belonging and the histories we carry with us.
Drawing inspiration from the Connemara landscape and the humble soft shield fern, Hussey weaves together analogue and digital technologies with handmade objects and personal archives. Her poem Soft Shield People Carry Me On inspired by ferns is a translation of landscape, memory and movement. Throughout the exhibition, the fern’s slow unfurling becomes a recurring motif. A quiet symbol of resilience and invisible connections that carry us across generations. Everyday materials, including marbles and pool noodles, are transformed through playful and tender gestures of touch and embrace.
At the heart of the exhibition is Hussey’s exploration of what it means to carry the people who came before us. Reflecting on the idea of a solo exhibition, she writes: “What is solo about living? I carry with me the people who came before me. They walk with me in every room I enter.” This sentiment runs through works such as Before America, Between Returns (2017), a photographic journey through family memories and landscapes in Kerry, and Suspended Until I Return Parts One & Two, a moving image collaboration exploring how bodies communicate with one another in response to their environments. Together, these works offer a glimpse into an intimate world where personal histories meet collective experiences of migration, motherhood, and memory.
Born in Dublin in 1991, Bryony Hussey (she/her) is a multidisciplinary and socially engaged artist based in Connemara, Galway. A graduate of BA Fine Art Central Saint Martins London (2014), her practice explores how interpersonal histories shape our relationships with landscape, community and one another. She works at the intersection of embodied language, performance and community-led engagement. She has exhibited widely and undertaken residencies internationally. In March 2027 she will undertake an artist residency at Fish Factory in Stöðvarfjörður Iceland to develop the research informing this exhibition.
Presented through Cahoots Artists, the ongoing partnership between Sample-Studios and Engage Art Studios, this exhibition is free and open to all at the Lord Mayor’s Pavilion, Fitzgerald Park, Cork. Join us for the opening on Saturday 5 December at 3pm. The exhibition continues until 16 January 2027. A limited-edition risograph pamphlet featuring Hussey’s poetry, artworks and a commissioned response by artist Lian Bell available to visitors throughout.
