Talk to the Land

Artist Colette Lewis discusses the Creative Enquiry residency you heard about in Part 1 and shares what she learned about making communities of interest, about entrenched ageism in our society, and about practical ways to ensure creative projects are inclusive of older people. NOW ARCHIVED ON SIRIUS PODCASTS

The key to a sustainable future is to preserve the place-based knowledge of the past. In part one of The Arts & Ageing Podcast, join retired fisherman Kevin Jones, Moggy Somers of community environmental group Cobh Zero Waste and artist Colette Lewis as they discuss the Local Know-how project, which was part of Colette's Creative Enquiry residency at Cobh's Sirius Arts Centre, exploring arts and a...

How can we continue to nurture our creativity as we age? What can artists bring to the table? An eight-part podcast series on arts and older people as part of  What Next? Arts and Ageing Resources , a programme funded by the Arts Council and initiated by Cork City Council. Originally published every Monday from the 4th of October 2021, the full Arts & Ageing podcast series is now archived on Siriu...

If you were offered a pill right now that would make you immortal, would you take it? Artist and filmmaker Anton Vidokle would. Enter the strange and wonderful world of Cosmism in Vidokle's company, a philosophy originating in the 19th century in which immortality and the technological ability to resurrect our ancestors sees humans colonising the cosmos. Vidokle's series of films and related proje...

"I feel like I'm One, Here, Now. But I know that this was the invitation to everybody." Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes is leading Sirius Arts Centre's 2023 summer school, on the practice of visionary Irish American artist Brian O'Doherty.  "His practice was a social practice, something that really doesn't stop with the wall or the frame on the nail ends. It's us working in his wake, and carrying out the...

In 2011, Holly Marie Parnell's family emigrated to Canada in search of a reasonable standard of living: Holly's younger brother David is quadriplegic and has complex care needs. Against a backdrop of Irish post-crash austerity, the Parnells felt they had no choice but to leave. "Families were given the choice of institutionalising their child or doing the care themselves and being plunged into pov...

After years raising her family, Pakistani-born artist Amna Walayat has been building a powerful art career in Ireland: her miniatures subvert an art form traditionally seen as decorative and feminine and turn them into a conversation about sexual politics and power dynamics. In October 2022, she was finishing up a residency at Sirius Arts Centre. She talks about reclaiming her kitchen table as a s...

UK artists Mel Jordan and Andy Hewitt, founders of the Partisan Social Club, have been on the trail of 19th century Cork philosopher and radical social reformer William Thompson, who not only inspired Marx, founded the idea of social science and wrote the first ever feminist text by a man in the English language, but who attempted to form a communal living experiment in West Cork in the 1820s. 

"In an ideal world, I'd like them to have a moment of solace." In this final instalment in the three-part conversation at SIRIUS with artist Marie Brett, recorded live for Culture Night 2022, learn about the large scale artwork Ritual of Stone and Water: Pilgrimage to the Ninth Wave Multiverse, commissioned by SIRIUS, which Marie built as a place of refuge for people following the "massive collect...

"I tend to seek out what I call 'inhuman places,' so it's not that humans aren't there, it's just that these are places where I feel that I'm actually hearing the place. Places where I can basically eavesdrop." Composer and sound recordist Karen Power in conversation in Sirius Arts Centre about recording under the ice in Antarctica, the humbling experience of recording in environments that contain...

"Shop-dropping is kind of the opposite of shop-lifting" - artist, activist, author and co-director of Social Practice CUNY Gregory Sholette on shop-dropping the Guggenheim gift-shop with Gulf Labour Coalition, the Dark Matter of the art world, his stay in SIRIUS, and his latest book, The Art of Activism and the Activism of Art.      

"They're almost like dust, enlarged." Cobh-based artist Fiona Kelly has constructed scalahedrons that mimic the structure of calcite crystals, one of the most commonly found minerals on the planet.  Join Fiona and host Ellie O'Byrne in SIRIUS to discuss her residency at industrial waste recycling company Gannon Eco in her native Co Westmeath, her fascination with Eskers and with humanity's tireles...

"I'm never satisfied with my work, ever, ever. For me, I have to find peace with that and accept that if I was to do that work again, I'd do it differently." Visit with artist Marie Brett in Cobh's Sirius Arts Centre as she talks through a large survey show spanning over a decade of her socially engaged practice. In part one, The Hidden Mountain, we explored Marie's filmic works. Here, the focus i...

"They're big topics. But it's what makes us human, isn't it?" West Cork artist Marie Brett works with huge and often taboo themes including the ambiguous loss felt by dementia sufferers and their carers, death rituals and human trafficking. Join SIRIUS Podcasts to chart the artist's life and her childhood growing up in Birmingham to Irish parents, and to explore her filmic works presented as part...

SIRIUS Podcasts is a new podcast series launching on May 23rd on all good podcast platforms. Subscribe to hear conversations with a diverse array of artists recorded in Sirius Arts Centre in Cobh, Co. Cork.