In Conversation: Caitríona Leahy with Dr Ben Gearey
This October, we are hosting three in-conversation lunchtime talks with artists featured in our current exhibition Groundwork: Climate Awareness in the UCC Art Collection. Each artist will explore their practice with an expert from University College Cork across themes of biodiversity, extraction and economics.
Expanding climate awareness through visual art encourages a greater account for stewardship of our damaged planet. Creative practice can be a location and moment of connection that transcends the everyday, offering the opportunity to think differently. Visual art, in this sense, allows us to consider the intricate relationships which impact the natural world and where and how we can situate ourselves in it.
Join artist Caitríona Leahy and Dr Ben Gearey (Dept of Archaeology, UCC) for a conversation that will explore peatland environments and the impact of human interventions. Leahy's artwork Critical Zone: Bog Study I, II, III, (2020 ) features in the current Glucksman exhibition Groundwork: Climate Awareness in the UCC Art Collection and it will serve as the starting point for this conversation.
Free admission. All welcome. Book here.
Each talk will be from 1-2pm and will allow time for questions and audience response.
Caitríona Leahy
Working across analogue photography, print, sculpture, moving image & installation, Catriona Leahy’s work explores deep time environmental histories & the latent effects of human interventions. Preoccupied with the question of how to reimagine the landscape in a time of ecological crisis, her work often focuses on anthropogenic landscapes – those made or transformed by man’s intervention.
Catriona Leahy is a visual artist based in Dublin and Kildare. She holds an MA Print from Royal College of Art, London (2013). Exhibitions include Agitation Co-op at Temple Bar Gallery & Studios (2021); How the Land Lies at Sirius Arts Centre (2020); Fast Slow Fast at CCA Derry~Londonderry (2019); Unfolding Landscape at De Cacaofabriek in Helmond, The Netherlands (2018). Leahy has her first major solo show at The Ashford Gallery RHA Dublin in November 2024.
Recent awards include Arts Council of Ireland Visual Arts Bursary (2023), Fire Station Artist Studios Digital Media Award (2022); Arts Council of Ireland Professional Development Award (2020), Arts Council of Ireland Visual Arts Bursary (2018), Culture Ireland Award (2018, 2016, 2011), Arts Council England Grants for the Arts (2016), AN Artist Bursary UK (2016).
She has been the recipient of numerous national and international residencies such as LEER (Landscape Ecology Environment Research) Residency at Leitrim Sculpture Centre (2021), The Frans Masereel Centre (2015, 2014, 2009), FLACC Workplace for Visual Artists (2014) - both in Belgium, and a year residency at The Florence Trust in London (2015 – 2016). She will embark on a 1-month residency at SIM – Association of Icelandic Visual Arts – in Reykjavik in July 2024.
Dr Benjamin Gearey
Benjamin Gearey is lecturer in environmental archaeology, University College Cork, with a wide range of research interests focused on wetland and especially peatland environments. He is PI for the ongoing IRC COALESCE funded project IPeAAT, and was CO-I for the recently completed EU Joint Planning Initiative/Cultural Heritage funded project ‘WetFutures’ and other IRC funded projects.
He is a member of the United Nations Global Peatlands Initiative and an elected member of the JPICH Scientific Advisory Committee with expertise in past climate change. He is editor of The Journal of Wetland Archaeology and has published extensively on aspects of peatland heritage, environmental change and human impact, in peer reviewed journals and books, including the recently published 'An Introduction to Peatland Archaeology and Palaeoenvironments' (Oxbow Books, 2023).