Triskel Sample Project Space

TRISKEL SAMPLE PROJECT SPACE, AN EXCITING NEW VISUAL ARTS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME IN CORK FOR 2024

A new partnership between Triskel and Sample-Studios will provide a visual arts project space for artists, especially emerging and mid-career artists, to test ideas and to develop new work that can be seen by the public. Triskel Sample Project Space offers tangible career development and audience engagement opportunities to artists on their ‘home turf’ where they have a safe space to develop new ideas, within which risk-taking is possible.

“Over the past few years, Triskel’s approach to visual arts has been one where we have worked with curators to programme the Gallery,” said Tony Sheehan, Artistic Director with Triskel. “Having consulted widely with artists, we are delighted that a new partnership with Sample-Studios will now utilise the Arts Centre as a residential space for experimentation, development and exhibition. Triskel has always had an important role in championing the visual arts in Cork, and we are delighted to work with Sample-Studios to create exciting opportunities for artists who live and work in the city, as well as artists nationally and internationally to engage with the city.”

Project-focused artist residencies will take place throughout 2024 offering artists a focused and intensive working space where they can develop and test their burgeoning projects in a hybrid workspace/public space. In some cases, artists will also present a culminatory exhibition, screening or performance. Over the course of their residencies, the artists will engage with audiences in Triskel. Additionally, the  Triskel Sample Project Space provides a meaningful culminatory platform for ongoing artist-led projects including the ‘Maritime’ residency, an artist-led studio exchange residency between artists in Brittany, France, and Cork-based artists Ida Mitrani and Rebecca Bradley, who will exhibit the work arising from this exchange in the Project Space in the summer months. The programme will also offer insights into the work of artist Paul McKenna, Cork County Council’s Dearcán Award recipient, as part of STAMP Festival in May.  

Aoibhie McCarthy, Director with Sample-Studios, said, “We’re delighted to work in partnership with Triskel Arts Centre who, in developing their new Visual Arts Strategy, have focused on creating meaningful resources to enable local artists to sustain their practice. Ten artists will benefit from this provision of space and a bursary from Triskel Arts Centre. This initiative provides a unique resource in a Cork context – a hybrid residency and exhibition space in a City Centre location – that will enable local artists to roadtest ideas, experiment with new mediums, get feedback from peers and engage new audiences.” 

The first artist to take up residence is Riki Matsuda, a Cork-based artist from the U.S with Japanese-Irish heritage who creates playful work focused on the limitations of language and communication. Using word-play, body language and personal experiences, her work unfurls misunderstandings with a sense of humour and affection. Riki is a recipient of the Sample-Studios Cork Midsummer Festival Emerging Artist Award and as part of her residency in Triskel will explore her materials, methodology and ideas before presenting the new work as part of the Festival in June.

Joseph Heffernan is a Cork-based visual artist, primarily a painter but also working in sculpture and assemblage. He will use his residency in September to consolidate a new body of work in a new context and develop further solo exhibition opportunities, at a critical juncture in his career. 

Etaoin Melville is a Cork-based visual artist, specialising in video and installation. She is currently working on two projects: a collaboration with Linda Cullen (aerial artist, writer and performer) on a project called Backbone that focuses on issues around motherhood and the value we hold individually and as a society for this role, investigated through socially engaged co-created works; and ‘Ancestral Sap’, which combines film, stop frame animation, dry point print-making and painting and explores the complexities of women’s place in the world. This residency in October will enable Etaoin to develop these projects and bring them to a more resolved conclusion through further collaborations, in order to apply for future solo exhibition opportunities. In advance of her residency, Etaoin will present her film work, Silent Voices, a film work created with her mother and daughter, as part of Cork Harbour Festival this June.

Berlin-based artist Kayleigh Maimaran will take up residency in Triskel in June. With a particular interest in the concept of psychological space and architecture, her practice combines video, sound and sculptural elements as a form to explore physical and non-visual aspects of space. She graduated in 2021 from MTU Crawford College of Art and Design with a BA in Fine Art and was awarded a Graduate Studio Residency at Sample-Studios, where she has been a member since. Her work has been part of multiple exhibitions including her solo exhibition Beyond Liminal (2022) in the Lord Mayor’s Pavilion, Cork, and her most recent solo exhibition Void Scape at GlogauAIR, Berlin, in 2023. Kayleigh will create an immersive space during the two weekends of Cork Midsummer Festival where audiences can relax and reflect. 

Grace Haynes is a visual artist and educator from the Cavan/Monaghan region who relocated to Cork City in 2023. Her work to date is concerned with the natural world, taking inspiration from flora and fauna found natively in Ireland. She has recently begun to explore alternative processes in eco arts, including in making and natural dyes which she then combines in her visual work. She has been collaborating with Lauren McClean to develop an immersive multi-sensory exhibition exploring diverse landscapes and the biodiversity within, aimed at young audiences. During her residency in November Grace will create a series of dioramas of each habitat, including woodlands and forests, the Burren, shorelines, sea cliffs and islets, marshland, bogs and wetlands, orchid-rich grassland and lakes and ponds. Musician and composer Lauren Mc Clean will work with her to create a soundscape to complement the dioramas.

About Triskel Arts Centre

Triskel Arts Centre is a vibrant cultural HUB in the heart of Cork City and. The main auditorium Triskel Christchurch is a multidisciplinary space housed in a fully refurbished neoclassical Georgian Church. This state-of-the-art venue, which launched in 2011, is programmed with a rich bill of live music (with a focus on Classical and Jazz concerts), cultural cinema, visual art exhibitions and literary events. Triskel runs a second contemporary art room Triskel Gallery Space. Cork Traveller Women’s Network relocated their Headquarters to Triskel in 2018 and yoga and dance studio The Collective Cork took up residence in May 2019. Paperboys Café and Garden serves brunch and beverages in a cosy 25-seater café on the ground floor of the centre. We are proud to be funded by the Arts Council.