This residency aims to gather and layer the dynamic and complex range of art and culture in Kilkenny, working in a way that responds to the challenges of the climate crisis. It prioritises the wellbeing of the artist, their practice, and local connections, while staying true to the artist’s practice. Emphasis is placed on connection and network building, including connecting with place, people, and other species. The focus is on starting conversations rather than quantifying outcomes, discovering ongoing work, and considering non-traditional mapping methods such as mapping emotions, conversations, uncertainty, or invisible ideas and time. Story-maps, systems thinking, deep mapping, and oral traditions of place shaping are also considered. The residency utilises ‘Hopes’ as a verb, creating an active response to building hope and developing a vocabulary and references that encourage active, local, and inclusive approaches to climate adaptation within art and culture
The successful artist undertaking the Rhizome Residency is Gareth Kennedy
About Gareth:
Sculptor Gareth Kennedy’s work explores the social agency of the handcrafted in the 21stcentury and generates ‘communities of interest’ around the production and performance of experimental material cultures. Informed by an anthropological approach these works draw on the layered histories of a location. Projects are embedded, evolve over time, and are enacted by diverse publics and individuals. With the hyperdigitisation of our everyday, Kennedy is interested in the use of anachronistic processes and technologies to produce ‘critical anachronism’ and generate contemporary encounter and experience. He often works with individuals who hold skills or knowledge that has been transmitted across generations to this end. His practice to date includes public art commissions, workshops, education projects, exhibitions, residencies and collaborations.
In 2009, he co-represented Ireland at the 53rdVenice Biennale alongside artist Sarah Browne and their collaborative practice, Kennedy Browne. In 2015 he was long listed for the prestigious VISIBLE Award for Die Unbequeme Wissenschaft (‘The Uncomfortable Science’), which explored a troubling history of anthropology in the Austrian/Italian Alps and it’s legacy. He is currently undertaking commissions for the National Children’s Hospital and an ongoing Micro Forest project with Superprojects and Fingal Arts Office in Dublin.
He teaches in a part time position Sculpture and Expanded Practice and is lead on the FIELD projectat NCAD, Dublin.He is the 2024Urban Fields artist in residence as part of L’Internationale Climate Assembly.
