Samir Mahmood
SIRIUS Podcasts
“I like to think that pain has the potential to transform in some way, and it all depends on how you look at it.” Samir Mahmood reflects on his move from a background in medicine, particularly health promotion, to his practice as a visual artist, in which he explores the connection between the material and the transcendental, often using his own body as a starting point. From early collages, Samir, whose origins are in Pakistan, has moved to miniature painting, adopting some of the skills and norms of the tradition from the Indian subcontinent, but also subverting it by introducing...
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Deirdre O’Mahony
SIRIUS Podcasts
“The thing that we can do as artists is to create public space so that the complex reality that farmers are dealing with can be heard and seen.” Deirdre O’Mahony’s intensively researched collaborative projects, which can encompass film, installation, performance, feasts, pedagogical platforms and more, engage with the politics of land and landscape, often through the lens of food and farming. Now, she thinks she’s found a way to make the EU’s policymakers listen to what farmers are saying about their experience of climate change.
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Looking back: 5 years with Miguel Amado
SIRIUS Podcasts
“My work is about people. It’s being a companion to the artist and a companion to the public. To develop something together, in dialogue, across a long period of time, that enables our personal development, but also enables us to engage in the social discussion of the moment.” From volunteering at a festival in Coimbra, Portugal, as a politicised 18-year-old, to being the first ever Portuguese person to attend an MA in curatorship at the Royal College of Art in London, to his vision for a further five years at Sirius Arts Centre, Miguel Amado reflects on his directorship over the...
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Mythlantics with Alice Rekab
SIRIUS Podcasts
“It’s this idea of needing to narrate your existence, and how you look and where you come from, and the complexity of yourself, and it’s having to do that in circumstances where you’re not sure exactly if every part of who you are is welcome.” Alice Rekab’s exhibition, Clann Miotlantach / Mythlantics, is held both in the conventional gallery spaces of the institution and, for the first time, in its basement. Rekab is an Irish/Sierra Leonean artist based in Dublin who explores themes of familial and artistic connections, diaspora, and sense of place and belonging.
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Changing Tides: Chapter 3
SIRIUS Podcasts
In the summer of 2024, works started on an extensive three phase restoration project at Sirius Arts Centre. Led by JCA Architects and Moroney Conservation, the works to the building began with restoring some of the features that architect Anthony Salvin designed for the RCYC clubhouse all the way back in the 1850s. In the third and final instalment of Changing Tides, join conservation architect Gareth O’Callaghan to hear all about the exciting and ambitious works, some of which are completed, and some of which are underway, and hear an outline vision for the future of the...
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Changing Tides: Chapter 2
SIRIUS Podcasts
“The architects of these buildings are looking back to the Italian renaissance; this building is a revival of a revival, if you know what I mean. This is an Irish building which is copying a Roman building of the renaissance, which is copying a building of Ancient Rome.” Historian Tom Spalding is the man whose meticulous research proved that the Royal Cork Yacht Club, constructed in 1854 on the site of a pavilion first constructed for the visit of Queen Victoria, was designed by English architect Sir Anthony Salvin, best known for his restoration work on Windsor Castle...
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Changing Tides: The evolving history of SIRIUS arts centre.
SIRIUS Podcasts
“It was something that was broken, and I had to fix it.” In 1987 Peter Murray, then curator at Crawford Art Gallery in Cork city, embarked on an extraordinary journey: his goal was to purchase and restore the then-derelict former Royal Cork Yacht Club building in Cobh and to transform it into a cultural venue. Over time, this vision crystalised: SIRIUS Arts Centre was to become an artist’s residency of international appeal, forging transatlantic connections. Peter Murray’s voyage was by no means a solo one. In this in-depth conversation, he pays tribute to the many others whose hard...
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Care, curse, comfort
SIRIUS Podcasts
"What is New Atlantic Triangulation? It's in my own experience as a black woman from Brazil with West and Central African heritage, who got Irish citizenship, reflecting on Atlantic triangulation historically has meant, and what I would like it to become. It's connecting these territories through my body and through experiences of people I know and share with." Thaís Muniz’s first solo show, 'Rites of Care, Curse & Comfort,' features prints, performance, installation, and textiles, some newly made for this occasion. The exhibition explores ideas of race, displacement and...
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Buttercup
SIRIUS Podcasts
In this episode of SIRIUS Podcasts, we join artist Sarah Browne, whose practice involves film, publishing and performance, to discuss her film installation Buttercup, which utilises the accessibility tools of audio description and captioning to explore the poetics of language interacting with image. Buttercup focuses on a particular childhood photograph, depicting a child wearing a Communion dress on her family farm, next to her father and her pet cow, the eponymous Buttercup. Buttercup is commissioned by SIRIUS and produced with funding from the Arts Council’s Arts and Disability Connect...
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From the bend in the river to the harbour’s mouth
SIRIUS Podcasts
“A harbour, because of its particular geography and how industry has developed, and commerce and trade, lends itself to these bigger industrial and economic forces coming into play, and that´s what´s happening as you´re getting further down the river.” Aoife Desmond on two of her films showing at SIRIUS, both exploring the relationship between humans and nature: one feature poetically tracing the River Lee from source to sea, and a short companion piece commissioned by and filmed at SIRIUS that engages with the site and its surroundings.
info_outlineIf 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 projects see the artist dive deep into Cosmism.