Triskel Sample Project space visual arts development programme in Cork continues into a New Year

The exciting visual arts partnership between Triskel and Sample-Studios continues into 2025, offering another twelve months of providing a visual arts project space for artists, especially emerging and mid-career artists, to test ideas and to develop new work that can be seen by the public. Triskel Sample Project Space offers tangible career development and audience engagement opportunities to artists on their ‘home turf’ where they have a safe space to develop new ideas, within which risk-taking is possible.
 
“Triskel is delighted that our partnership with Sample-Studios to utilise the Arts Centre as a residential space for experimentation, development and exhibition of visual arts is continuing and growing in 2025, Triskel has always had an important role in championing the visual arts in Cork, and we are delighted to work with Sample-Studios to continue creating and facilitating exciting opportunities for artists to engage," said Tony Sheehan, Artistic Director at Triskel.
 
Project-focused artist residencies will take place throughout 2025, offering artists a focused and intensive working space where they can develop and test their burgeoning projects in a hybrid workspace/public space. In some cases, artists will also present a culminatory exhibition, screening or performance. Over the course of their residencies, the artists will engage with audiences in Triskel. The first artists in the space for the new year are Ukrainian artists Tetiana Milshyna and Viktoria Kondratieva, both of whom are part of Sample-Studios’ Studios of Sanctuary mentorship and training programme. Fiona Boniwell will work in the space in March, honing work that she developed in Uillinn West Cork Arts Centre and will exhibit in the Lord Mayor’s Pavilion in May.
 
Kate McElroy advocates using art as a tool for fostering communication and meaningful exchange and during her residency, she will run a weekly reading group with Sample-Studios members. Annie Mar will develop a new body of work, using the time to strengthen themes within her practice, centering on a set of drawers and unfinished paintings she inherited from her grandfather's studio, untouched for eighteen years since his death.
 
The residency and subsequent solo exhibition by Maitiu Mac Chartaigh from July-September will build upon the artist’s current focus on rural queerness and agricultural processes in Ireland. Their residency coincides with Cork Pride Festival. Through large scale performative paintings Ava Hayes explores the limitations of verbal communication and the resulting physical frustrations. She will hone her work ahead of her solo exhibition in the Lord Mayor’s Pavilion in December.
 
In November, Cork Zine Festival take up residence with ambitions to further develop CZF within the larger arts community in Cork City. CSF is organised and overseen by artists and zine makers Annie Mar Forrester, Cassiel DuCharme, Elize de Beer and Justine Lepage.
 
Aoibhie McCarthy, Director with Sample-Studios, said, “We’re delighted to work in partnership with Triskel Arts Centre who, in developing their new Visual Arts Strategy, have focused on creating meaningful resources to enable local artists to sustain their practice. Eleven artists will benefit from this provision of space and a bursary from Triskel Arts Centre. This initiative provides a unique resource in a Cork context - a hybrid residency and exhibition space in a City Centre location - that will enable local artists to roadtest ideas, experiment with new mediums, get feedback from peers and engage new audiences.”
 

 
 
 
NOTES FOR THE EDITOR

About Triskel Arts Centre

Triskel Arts Centre is a vibrant cultural HUB in the heart of Cork City and. The main auditorium Triskel Christchurch is a multidisciplinary space housed in a fully refurbished neoclassical Georgian Church. This state-of-the-art venue, which launched in 2011, is programmed with a rich bill of live music (with a focus on Classical and Jazz concerts), cultural cinema, visual art exhibitions and literary events. Triskel runs a second contemporary art room Triskel Gallery Space. Cork Traveller Women’s Network relocated their Headquarters to Triskel in 2018 and yoga and dance studio The Collective Cork took up residence in May 2019. Paperboys Café and Garden serves brunch and beverages in a cosy 25-seater café on the ground floor of the centre. Cork Theatre Collective are housed in the Theatre Development Centre (TDC). This new theatre resource and development organisation for the theatre artists of Cork City and County, aims to support the development of theatre artists rooted in Cork and their work through residencies and supports. We are proud to be funded by the Arts Council.
 
About Sample-Studios
Sample-Studios is one of Ireland’s largest artist studios. Sample-Studios launch, support and sustain creative careers and practices in Cork. They provide affordable studios, professional development, mentorship and residencies for over 125 artists and arts practitioners and present an ambitious programme of public exhibitions and events in The Lord Mayor’s Pavilion, Triskel Arts Centre, and sites throughout Cork City, engaging over 27,000 people annually.