With is an exhibition, and event and a gathering…
With artists, artworks, books and words, somehow related
With Seanie Barron With David Beattie With Jes Fernie With Michael Holly With Aino Lintunen, With Amanda Rice With Elina Vainio, and With others, somehow related
With Askeaton Contemporary Arts from a small town in Limerick, Ireland and With PUBLICS in Helsinki, Finland as co-curators, somehow related
With the artists organised With other artists, somehow related
With arrangements of artworks With other artworks, somehow related
With thoughts through which these arrangements With artists, artworks and ideas With others are made to be, somehow related
With its curators, artists and others talking With each other about these things, and the nature of things, somehow related
With some ideas of things, and the nature of things amongst other things, somehow related
With a set of relations With, of, and between people, nature, things, and material ideas, somehow related
With as an affinity With all of these things, and their nature, somehow related
With these, With them, With you, and With others, all somehow related.

WITH Askeaton Contemporary Arts is the first event of a new expanding series of curatorial collaborations, projects or pairings, where PUBLICS comes together with another institution because of common or overlapping ideas, interests and concerns.

Our first collaboration WITH Askeaton Contemporary Arts takes place at PUBLICS on May 4th 12-4.30pm. Welcome to the exhibition opening event with a day long programme.

Askeaton Contemporary Arts, an artist-led organisation from southwest Ireland, are in residency at PUBLICS, bringing a cohort of artists associated with their ongoing programme to audiences and the artistic community in Helsinki. Collectively entitled WITH Askeaton Contemporary Arts, this initiative showcases an intentional group of people living together, co-operating and sharing common interests, resources and work in the Irish countryside.

Emphasising oral histories, little known folklore and explorations of urgent ecological research, Seanie Barron’s bespoke walking sticks, Jes Fernie’s explorations of the ups and downs of being an artist working in Ireland, David Beattie’s deep listening of ancient monuments feature. Michael Holly introduces his mapping of contemporary Irish landscapes and ecologies are presented beside Amanda Rice’s spiralling narratives of extraction abroad by the Irish diaspora. More exchanges of artistic experience and social encounter feature in Michele Horrigan and Sean Lynch’scontinuing curatorial and publishing activities, researching Askeaton Contemporary Arts’ role and position in contemporary Irish and European society.

PUBLICS invites Finnish artists Aino Lintunen and Elina Vainio to exhibit WITH the Askeaton Contemporary Arts. Lintunen’s and Vainio’s recents works draw upon some loose commonalities, relational connections, kinds of woodiness of materials and processes, and will be joined by artist curator Sakari Tervo who runs the exhibition platform Pitted Dates, in conversation with Paul O’Neill.

This event is supported by The Arts Council of Ireland’s International Residency Initiative Scheme and The Embassy of Ireland, Finland.

Please read more below about Askeaton Arts and the individual artists.

Bios

Askeaton Contemporary Arts 
Since 2006, Askeaton Contemporary Arts commission, produce and exhibit contemporary art in the locale of a small town in County Limerick, Ireland. An artist residency programme situates Irish and international artists in the midst of Askeaton each summer, while thematic exhibitions, publications and events often occur. Through these methods, over one hundred artists’ projects have been realised.

With no ‘white-cube’ gallery spaces in Askeaton, artists work in public spaces throughout the town. This form of engagement focuses on the existing dynamics of the locale, intending to bring forward the diverse layers of daily life and create a rich framework for subjective encounters. Local audiences are often actively implicated into the development of projects through their assistance or participation. Such an approach is built on a belief that contemporary art can be used as an active hub for local society, as a form of critique, investigation and celebration with artists at the centre playing a primary and fundamental role. 
https://askeatonarts.com/information

Michele Horrigan
Michele Horrigan is curator, director and founder of Askeaton Contemporary Arts since 2006. She works as an artist, with exhibitions at EVA International, Limerick and Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, and maintaining an active publishing practice.

Sean Lynch
Sean Lynch is an artist working with sculpture and video. A long time Askeaton resident, he represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 2015, and recent solo exhibitions include Edinburgh Art Festival, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, and Modern Art Oxford.

Seanie Barron
For decades, Seanie Barron has been carving and shaping wood in a workshop at the back of his house in Askeaton. His walking sticks and sculptures are borne out of a lifelong understanding of nature and often-humorous interpretations of the environment around him. He roams around Askeaton, looking for the right branch left in a field or underneath a bush, to then shape into surreal forms referencing seahorses, weasels, dancers and ice skaters. Many double as whistles, or incorporate found objects such as coins, bullets and animal bones.

David Beattie
David Beattie is an artist and lecturer based in Dublin. Beattie’s artistic practice explores the material world through experiential, physical engagements with objects and non-objects. Recent projects have focused on the social and environmental impact of digital technologies, agroecology, psychoacoustics and the communal listening experience. He was awarded the Harpo Foundation Award in 2010 and has recently presented his work in Derry, Pittsburgh and Carlow. 

Jes Fernie
Jes Fernie is an independent curator, writer and lecturer based in the UK. She is interested in the social, political and environmental context in which art is made, situated, and viewed. In 2021 she launched the Archive of Destruction, a research project that brings together narratives around public sculpture that has been destroyed by rage, boredom, fear, greed and love. 

Michael Holly
Michael Holly is an artist, filmmaker, researcher, and lecturer in filmmaking at the University of Sussex. His work often focuses on troubled human interactions with land, ecologies, and histories. Michael is a regular contributor to Askeaton Contemporary Arts and works in collaboration with filmmaker Mieke Vanmechelen.

Aino Lintunen
Aino Lintunen is a visual artist based in Helsinki. She works with painting, text and sound. Lintunen has studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts Helsinki (MFA), Aalto University, Helsinki (MA) and the Slade School of Fine Arts in London. She is part of the working group of artist-run space SIC, located in Helsinki.

Amanda Rice
Amanda Rice is an artist and filmmaker based between London and Belfast. Her films are a combination of observational documentary techniques, staged scenarios combined with modes of both investigative and nonlinear storytelling which explore material histories related to ecological subject matter. Her films have been presented at Eva International Biennial (Ireland), Flux Factory (New York), CCA Glasgow, and the Irish Film Institute (Dublin). 

Elina Vainio 
Elina Vainio is a Helsinki-based visual artist working with a wide range of approaches to varying materials. Her works often draw attention to human-centred worldviews, questioning how and through what kinds of lenses we come to perceive things and ultimately our place among everything. Vainio regularly collaborates with other artists and is currently a member of an experimental art collective Nomadic Kiln Group. Vainio has graduated from the Uniarts Helsinki’s Academy of Fine Arts and the Chelsea College of Art. Her works have been shown, for example, at Lappeenranta Museum (2023); HAM – Helsinki Art Museum (2021); Wäinö Aaltonen Museum (2020); Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma (2019) and Gwangju Biennale (2018).

Sakari Tervo
Sakari Tervo is an artist-curator who runs the exhibition platform Pitted Dates and works as a university teacher at Aalto University. He has co-directed artist-run spaces Titanik (Turku) & Sorbus (Helsinki). For Tervo, art is a social weave where other possible worlds exist.