Barbara Diener was been selected to participate in the Sample-Studios Spike Island Summer Residency 2025. Barbara has prepared a new body of work which responds to Spike Island’s rich heritage and characteristic landscape. She engaged with the island and its layered, complicated history, through a contemplative and responsive lens. She has been especially drawn to its complex architecture and the traces left behind by those who once lived or were held there.
Barbara’s lens-based and research-driven practice spans both video production and photography and often incorporates sculptural elements and artefacts. In her photographs, Diener has focused on the areas of the island less accessible to most visitors. In response to the multi-faceted and complex narratives and practices associated with Spike Island, she employs a variety of visual methods—long exposures, mirrors, light and shadow—to allude to the many layers of the past and stories of the people who have inhabited the site.
In this exhibition Diener has created a multi-media installation, overstimulating at times, that combines video, scored by d. stine, and resin sculptures, which encapsulate dried seaweed gathered on the shores of Spike Island. These sculptures reflect her ongoing interest in the waters and shores surrounding the island. The seaweed, once fresh and full of moisture, is now dried and fragile. Despite their decaying state, these resilient plants retain their form and continue to inspire wonder. Diener merges natural and artificial elements in this work, a recurring theme in her practice and across the island, highlighting the delicate balance between the organic and the constructed.
This residency is delivered in partnership with Spike Island Cork and Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh and is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland.