Artists gather for collective show with a different vision
Still, We Gather, an exhibition running at the city’s Galway Arts Centre until February 8, is a group exhibition and programme of events featuring more than 28 contemporary Irish artists, collectives and groups, many of whom are Galway-based.
Their work explores how the act of gathering can create space for care, joy, resistance and shared futures.
Still, We Gather involves artists working across a wide range of mediums as they celebrate the social and political potential of coming together, recognising how the act of gathering can work as a way of care, joy, protest and collective imagination.
The show, which was developed through an Open Call process, includes contemporary Irish artists whose practices emerge from diverse experiences and whose works explore how connection and resistance are sustained and reimagined across borders, cultures and times.
The theme of solidarity is woven throughout, with many works having been developed through collaboration, collectives and socially engaged projects.
Works on display investigate how culture, land and language are carried forward or lost, how communities sustain connection in times of deepening political tensions, and how collective care can counter fragmentation.
Reflections on the erosion of ecologies and languages, the fragility of social infrastructures – such as housing and care – and the growing uncertainty facing younger generations frame Ireland’s present in terms of international struggle and resistance down through history.
Still, We Gather invites people to engage with political, social and environmental forces, as it highlights how artists can continue to offer alternatives to persistent cycles of extraction, displacement and forgetting.
This is done by creating space so that people can imagine and build different futures together.
It’s at Galway Arts Centre, 47 Dominick Street until February 8, and all are welcome. More information at www.galwayartscentre.ie
Pictured: Calling the Bird Ancestors from Still we Gather at Galway Arts Centre.