Riverbank Arts Centre May 2008

In May 2008 a three-week exhibition was held at Riverbank Arts Centre, Newbridge, Co Kildare, Ireland, which showcased work in progress from this exciting collaboration. A promotional publication was also launched at the exhibition.

Nant Gwtheyrn Residency

Le Chéile Background

The collaboration was initiated in August 2004 when Steffan Jones-Hughes, from the Regional Print Studio in Wrexham, visited Ireland on a CCAT Interreg Go and See grant. He met with Margaret Becker in the Leinster Printmaking Studio and they talked about the potential for some sort of print exchange. In October 2006 discussions were followed by exchange visits between artists in both studios.

The seed for this project lay with John Berger's account of his communication through drawing with Marisa Camino. They found the lack of a common (verbal) language an advantage. Twinning with a Welsh partner we began a similar dialogue, where some of us have tried to communicate only through the image. Themes of land, language and place emerged as starting points for this dialogue. It has been both an invigorating and a challenging experience. The work was, and continues to be exchanged by email or post, in notebooks or as first proofs.

What makes this collaboration especially different is the fact that the artists are not working in the same physical space and therefore the work is produced sequentially. There is no face-to-face communication, no interruptions of dialogue, no discussion, and no immediate response. The collaborating artist responds to the work in front of him/her. The work develops at a distance, slowly. Therefore, because of this delayed response, the project is a long term one which is now entering its next phase.

New participants have come on board in Ireland, in Wales and now in Australia. This next phase, while encouraging continued collaborations between established partners, consists of opening up the project to elicit responses to any image by any of the artists, thus encouraging visual dialogue between any two, three or group of participants.

Eileen Keane

I live in Newbridge, Co. Kildare which is about 25 miles south of Dublin but I was brought up in the west of Ireland in Roscommon. I moved to Kildare after college when I got a fulltime job teaching in Naas and I have lived in Kildare ever since, got married there and have two children. I was mainly involved in painting up to 1997, that year I attended a course in the National College of Art and Design and was introduced to printmaking by Taffina Flood of the Graphic studio. I liked the technical aspect of it and the unexpectedness of the results and I joined the Leinster Printmaking studio when it was set up in 1998. I work mostly with carborundum and collograph as it suits the textural quality of my work but sometimes combine this with photoetch especially in the use of text.

My work is inspired by organic forms abstracted mainly from landscape studies. I am interested in the linear quality of openings in natural surfaces that suggest layers beneath of time and history. I use a layering of textures in much of my work, and at the moment have used formal rectangular shapes to frame textural areas and create a kind of window effect. When I started working with my welsh twin Linda on the idea of home and memory we started with maps and I began to work on imagery inspired by the bog near my home- Mouds bog- exploring its physical presence through making collographs from materials found on the bog and also its history of burial rituals and its inspiration for poets such as Seamas Heaney. I used a map of this bog in several of the pieces and also some text to represent memories or to give the bog its own voice in language.

I am also a writer and am very interested in words and language. I am fairly fluent in Gaelic but do not speak it at home and was very interested to see how much the welsh language is part of everyday life in Wales as I assumed it was the same as here with only a few isolated places speaking Gaelic every day. This project has widened the scope of my work with a broader use of ideas, from texture to text and mapping and has given me an interest in making more artists books as this was something I discussed with Linda and she sent me some information on technical aspects. I look forward to developing these ideas further over the course of the next year.

Margaret Becker

Margaret was born in Dublin, grew up in Ireland and attended the National College of Art, Dublin. Graduated with teachers certificate, moved to Rome for a one year residency, attending the free school of painting and joined an toir gloinne stained glass studio and worked on commisions for stained glass windows throughout Ireland, England and America. Joined graphic studio Dublin, and studied printmaking with John Kelly and Liam O'Brion. Awarded Biennal prize for print in Listowel Writers week , Co. Kerry; awarded 1st prize for stained glass panel at international exhibition celebrating the centenary of "The Messenger " magazine , in Dublin; has exhibited in major exhibitions in Ireland, Holland, Belgium, France and USA. Moved to Clane, Co. Kildare and founded the Leinster print studio in 1998. Recently illustrated book of poetry by Desmond Egan with silk screens. Now lives and works from her studio in Loughanure, Clane, Co. Kildare

I like printmaking, as it is a "hands on" medium, like stained glass, there is the visual and the practical involvement, which is exciting and appealing to me. The collaboration with the welsh printmakers has opened up numerous doors, both artistically and culturally, leading to other international printmakers becoming involved with our studio, which will lead on to future exhibitions with many more print makers, which is more then we thought would happen when we started the venture.