Cork Midsummer Festival art reviews: Aideen Barry, Sinéad Gleeson, Amanda Coogan, Sarah Lou Kinneen

Irish Examiner

26-06-2025

Aideen Barry and Sinéad Gleeson, Western Frequencies, The Hub, UCC ★★★★☆
Multi-media visual artist Aideen Barry Author and author, editor and broadcaster Sinéad Gleeson have both been exceptionally busy figures on the Irish arts scene over the past few decades, and it is no surprise to learn that they are friends and collaborators.
Gleeson's books include the collection of essays, Constellations: Reflections from Life (2019), and the novel Hagstone (2024). Barry's projects include Vacuuming in a Vacuum, a short film created in a zero gravity chamber on a NASA aircraft in 2008, and Klostes, a stop motion film she produced for Kaunas, The European Capital of Culture in Lithuania in 2022.
Aideen Barry.
Interviewed by Liz Quirke, poet and lecturer at UCC's Department of English, Barry and Gleeson are pleasant and engaging, though neither is shy about expounding on the insecurity of a career in the arts in Ireland. They discuss the struggles of being taken seriously as women in the arts world, of balancing careers with the responsibilities of motherhood, and of the endless hustling required to generate any kind of income. In Gleeson's case, these difficulties have been compounded by her experience of arthritis and leukemia.
They speak of their moral obligation to create challenging art that addresses society's flaws, and Barry worries that they are part of the last generation of artists, as an arts education is now more accessible to the wealthy than to the working classes. Despite their frustrations, both affirm their faith in the creative life and the pursuit of artistic achievement over profit.
Amanda Coogan, Caught in the Furze, Cork Centre for Architectural Education, Douglas St ★★★★☆
Performance artist Amanda Coogan's Caught in a Furze is an installation and durational performance inspired by the Wrens of the Curragh, a group of women who settled in 'nests' in the countryside around the British Army camp in Co Kildare for much of the 19th century. They lived communally, barely surviving on the proceeds of prostitution and charity.
Amanda Coogan. Picture: Eoin O'Neill
Coogan's installation features seven furze bushes suspended upsidedown from a ceiling, and a selection of prams. She wanders among them, dressed in a jacket of surgical gloves, with one foot bare. As is often the case with performance art, the experience of bearing witness can test one's patience. The reward comes in acknowledging how utterly desolate an experience it was for the Wrens to live as they did. Many ended their lives in institutions such as the Magdalene Laundries.
Sarah Lou Kinneen, Fruiting Futures, Cork Centre for Architectural Education, Douglas St ★★★☆☆
Sarah Lou Kinneen's Fruiting Futures is more whimsical; a living, breathing artwork that is still in the process of growth. Visitors are invited to don a set of headphones connected to a panel of fungi, each of which produces different sounds. The project is delightful, but might have been better served by a more sympathetic setting than the foyer of the Centre for Architectural Education.