Karl Burke is an interdisciplinary artist who works in the mediums of sculpture, installation, photography, video, sound and is a practicing musician. The art work he produces is sculptural in nature and deals with issues related to our inherit perception of space, our three dimensional world. A current body of work " wooden drawings " involves the placement of uniform lengths of processed wood in various situations in a particular environment, natural or manmade. Site specific and responsive in nature these three dimensional interventions endeavor to form a physical and emotive relationship between the art object, space\ place and in particular the viewer.

Image: Untitled Botanics

Fergus Byrne works in visual and performance art and is based in Dublin. He received a BA in Fine Art from NCAD Dublin and an MA in Theatre and Performance at University of Hull, England. He has performed in both original solo work and in devised and directed group productions. Alongside this performance practice he has pursued a visual art practice addressing many of his performance themes through object and drawing formats.
In the past year he has exhibited Fiction at Pallas Heights, More than Walking, an installation at Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council and presented video and writings at Hotel Ballymun.

Image: Extinguish ll

Rhona Byrne's work draws on the physical, emotional and cultural relationships with the built environment and the existential interaction with the spaces and places we inhabit. It is the focus on the individual and internal emotional dialogue that is prevalent throughout her work, addressing deeper psychological ideals raising fundamental questions of our existence. Often responding to a place or situation Rhona employs diverse media and processes in her work; photography, video, sculpture, installation, collaborative art projects and publications. Rhona Byrne was born and is based in Dublin, Ireland. She graduated from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, in 1994 with a BFA in sculpture. She has exhibited extensively and realised projects in Ireland and abroad and has been awarded several artists residencies, commissions and awards.

Image: Bridge 2006

Carol Anne Connolly currently lives and works in the Mantua Arts Project in Co. Roscommon as one of its directors and as a resident artist. She is a Fine Art Sculpture graduate from the National College of Art and Design and a recent recipient of the Farrell and Coy Emerging Artist Award. She is inspired by positive action through creative process within society and is herself an activist by means of creating community based projects and artistic interventions.

Image:Beta-carotene

Caroline Conway

Caroline has been working in the medium of relief printing since graduating from Edinburgh College of Art with first class honors. This piece is part of an ongoing investigation of the relationship between past and present explored during a nine month residency at Belmont Mill Studio, Offaly.

Image: Hear my prayer

Mark Cullen was born in Dublin in 1972. Cullen works with various media.
Recent works include MAIM XI for IMMA, Temporary Portable Reservoirs at The Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery, Dublin and Siege House, London, Cosmic Annihilator, an installation at Pallas Heights and Open EV+A (curated by Dan Cameron 2005) Limerick City Gallery, Multiplicities in Fota House, Cork, Context Gallery Derry, Roscommon Arts Centre, Looking for the Good Life , Draíocht, Dublin, EV+A Imagine Limerick, (curated by Zdenka Badovinac, 2004) Limerick City Gallery, SITED at the Dublin FRINGE Festival and Gasworks open, Gasworks, London. In 2005 he completed a Masters in Visual Arts Practices at DLIADT and was an award winner at EV+A 2005. He has just completed a residency at El Levante in Rosario, Argentina.

In 1995 with Brian Duggan he was the co-founding partner of Pallas Studios, Dublin. Cullen has been curating with Darklight Digital Film Festival since 1999. He is also a director of Pallas Contemporary Projects a new space for experimental art in Dublin.

Image: Jupiter in Scorpio

Jeremy Deadman has made sound objects since 1996. Whether man-made or natural objects he always uses his own voice for the soundtracks. Examples include 'Fridge' (1996) where a minimal white gloss painted square canvas frequently emits his impression of the buzzing hum of a fridge. 'Flayed' (2000) consists of a large analogue clock containing the one-minute soundtrack of 60 individual yelps of pain, played continuously at the same time as the second had jolts round. Jeremy has also made collages from adhesive vinyl and, more recently, small ink drawings.

Group shows include 'Hello..Clk..Bzz..Whrr..Nice to Meet You', 1999, at Kunstbunker, Nuremberg, Germany, curated by Gavin Wade and 'The Lost Collection of an Invisible Man', 2003 at The Laing Gallery, Newcastle, curated by Brian Griffiths. Solo shows are 'Ouch!', 2000, at Five Years, London and 'Stuck', 2002-2003, at The Economist Plaza, London. Most recently he was included in 'Metropolis Rise: New Art from London', at the CQL design centre in Shanghai and at DIAF in Beijing, China curated by Anthony Gross and Jen Wu in 2006. He has also co-curated the drawing exhibition, 'Only Minutes to Live' in 2005 with Klega at Temporary Contemporary in London.

Image:Flayed

Mark has organized a number of independent and institutionally supported curatorial projects and was the Visual arts curator with the Dublin Fringe festival form 2000-2004.

Video still:Landscapes.

Jesse jones is a dublin based artist, she studied fine art in the national college of art and design and completed a Masters in visual arts practices in iadt in 2005.Recent work inculdes "12 Angry Films", a year long collaborative film project that culminated in a temporary Drive-in cinema in dublin's docklands. She is currently resident in Fire Station Artist studios.

Video still: On the Waterfront - 2005

Her work for Birr Vintage Week 2007 will comprise of an installation of prints on glass hung in an on-street window and framed monoprints on paper displayed on an interior wall. Kate’s works are intricate, sensitive studies of the natural environment which focus on the structural correlations between forms found in lichens and other plants and animals. Intrigued by recurring patterns in nature, Kate’s work aims to draw attention to the subtle and delicate minutiae that surround us.

Image: Green and brown cells

Recent Exhibitions
2007 Hotel Ballymun, large scale sculptural performance commissioned by Breaking Ground 2 www.hotelballymun.com
2006, x-mass the spot group show curated by Nevan Lahart in the Draoicht Art centre Blanchards town Dublin
2006 Commissioned by Katerina Gregos to produce a new work for EV+A '06. Community Art Placement '06, and Backyard Boogie '06 Sculptural Installations.
2005 Artcirq/Seamus Nolan. Collaboration and installation with Isuma productions, an independent Inuit production company from northern Canada. Curared by Grant Watson in the Project Art Centre Templebar.
2005 Urban Bicycle Exchange, A performance installation commissioned by The Project Art Centre with the Hugh Lane Gallery and the Goethe Institute as part of the group show Communism in the Project Art Centre, Templebar.

Image:Bandstand 2006 - 30 Discarded pallets; 144" x 96"

In order for art to communicate today, I believe it has to arrest the public's attention in a different way that is not solely reliant on the visual. Art has to be about action, feeling and emotion and only then it has the power to really move you.

Artists' biography:

Sascha Perfect (New Zealand/Ireland) has an MA in Visual Arts Practices from IADT and a Post Graduate Diploma in Performance from the University of Novi Sad, Serbia. Recent exhibitions include Organ City Excursions Performance Festival, Limerick and Postcards from the Edge Dublin, Intimacy Hotel Ballymun,Tulca Live, Galway, Reality Show with Dejan Garbos at Gravity Free Art Festival 3 in Bulgaria, Engendered Species CSU Gallery Los Angeles, USA and Guuturri -A Performance Installation, The James Joyce House of the Dead, Dublin

Image: still from 'Intimacy' performance.

Sonia Shiel's practice caricatures earnest sentiments typically associated with notions of vast expanse, nocturne, infinity and annihilation while suggesting an absurdity to mankind's wishful harnessing of natural phenomena. Her current work augments to some degree mythologies from popular history and romantic culture, as found in painting, music, literature and film. Shiel's narratives while intimate and reductive in nature seek to reclaim the familiar or undermine the monumental with disproportionate consequence.

In 2006 Sonia Shiel exhibited 'By My Side Be' at Studio 6, Temple Bar Gallery &Studios and participated in shows at the Wexford Arts Centre and Draiocht. She completed her MA in Visual Art Practices from IADT in January 2007, exhibiting Rabbit Run at Broadstones XL and was awarded the HIAP Residency in Helsinki, where she had a show in the Project Room at the Cable Factory, supported by Culture Ireland, the Arts Council, FRAME and The Finnish Institute. Most recently, Shiel was the recipient of the Tony O'Malley Award from the Butler Gallery and has commenced a three year residency at Temple Bar Gallery & Studios. In September she will have a solo show at the Roscommon Arts Centre, selected by Linda Quinlan as part of the Artists Curate Program. She is currently co-cordinating HOUSE PROJECTS: an initiative, supported by the Arts Council Projects Award and Culture Ireland.

Image:Hood

Born in Dublin, Juliana Walters graduated in 2006 with an MA (Hons) Visual Art Practice from DLIADT. Having previously lived in Paris and London, Walters combined her work as a fashion editor with her fine art studies. In 2004, she graduated with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art Practice from London Metropolitan University. During this period Walters developed an interest in phenomenology, minimalism and installation art, and in 2004 was awarded The Owen Roley Prize for the site specific-installation Chill in London. Besides combining a number of different disciplines, her practice to date principally concerns itself with her ongoing enquiry into the negotiation of space and sense of place, and the broader concerns which contemporary cultural spaces invoke- such as fractured identity, dislocated perception and displacement. Walters has exhibited in both Ireland and the UK.

Image: Composition 1 - (clothes moth) 2007
Materials: Extra Superlash Building Mascara on paper

This year he has been invited as Visual Arts Curator choosing works from open submission and inviting a group of contemporary artists with a view to expanding the field of arts practice within the festival.

Murnaghan was Artistic Director and curator of 5th Gallery at Guinness Storehouse for its existence (2000-03), previous to that he ran he the artistic programme at Arthouse, in Dublin. He is recipient of various arts awards and holds a Masters Degree in Visual Culture from IADT Dublin.

Synesthesia sat

There are several differences to the visual arts section of Birr Vintage Week and Arts Festival 2007, not least the above title. For the first time, the process was one of open submission and invited artists, leading to a more extensive array of contemporary art practice. There is also an official curator in the form of Paul Murnaghan. Murnaghan is a practicing artist but has spent many years working between both disciplines.

Several venues are being utilised to accommodate this diverse body of work which embraces installation, video, sound, drawing, performance, painting and sculptural pieces. The main hub of activity will be Birr Union Workhouse, though this is only one of the various spaces, steeped in history that have be generously lent for the duration of the festival. There has been a constant trickle of non-indigenous artists visiting Birr over the past two months and the majority of the work that will be on show is new, being developed especially for this week long event. An art-map will be published on the website and distributed as a handout describing who, what, where and when.

The 'Synesthesia' of the title relates to the evocation of one kind of sense impression when another sense is stimulated, a basic example would be the sensation of colour when a sound is heard. There are documented cases of individuals known as 'synesthetes', who experience certain tastes or smells in relation to names or numbers. It also references phenomena that occur on the periphery of our senses, moments that haunt our existence always existing in an elusive context. The use of this open interpretive deliberately avoids a definite thematic allowing for experimentation by a group of artists well suited to developing methodologies in unfettered situations. It is hoped that by placing these artists within this perspective their reaction will be unencumbered by any preordained structure and relate more to the interrelation of all the senses employed within the experience and contemplation of their individual practices. Whatever is formed, discussed and delivered, will construct the exhibitions final significance.

Slavek Kwi

is sound-artist, composer and researcher whose main interest lies in the phenomena of perception as the fundamental determinant of relations with Reality. He has been fascinated by sound-environments for the last 25 years, focusing on electroacoustic sound-paintings. These complex audio-situations are created mainly from site specific recordings, resulting in subjective reports for radio-broadcast,
"cinema for ears" performed on multiple speakers, sound-installations integrated into the environment and performances. Interested equally in free_music research as part of social investigations and employing the space_time and any objects it contains as instrument. His works oscillates between purely sound_based and multidisciplinary projects.

Image:Asymmetrical_mandala

Diane Henshaw

My current practice deals primarily with abstraction and focuses on the banal, memory drawing - using ideologies in regard to who what where when why : dealing with opposites as a mode for making work.Drawings focus on dematerialised matter - peeling layers of paint, grease on rickshaw drivers shirts, dusty road dirt on skin - psychological discord : absence : reclaiming space : decay : emptiness - stripping back the essentials of painting and line to its rawest state.

Henshaw was awarded a residency to the Sanskriti Kendra Foundation in India on a Tyrone Guthrie Centre International Exchange for artists during 2006 and this is the resulting body of work.

Image:Rare earth

Patrick Murphy

Patrick is a graduate of NCAD Art & Design 2003. His work considers concepts of purity and isolation and the comparitive beauty of landscape and dreamscape.

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