Research connections and collaborations with artists
The Earth Institute supports connections between our members and artists working in a range of media through residencies, funded projects, one-off workshops and other forms of collaboration.
If you'd like to find out more about opportunities for working with us, please (opens in a new window)get in touch or explore some of our current and previous collaborations below.
New for 2025: ARISE
(opens in a new window)ARISE(opens in a new window) - Art & Research in Sustainability and Environmentis an interdisciplinary project led by UCD Parity Studios in partnership with the Earth Institute, WaterLANDS project and IMMA - Irish Museum of Modern Art.
The sustainability challenges facing the world are multiple, interlinked and urgent; a polycrisis. Academic research can investigate problems and identify solutions but the fundamental structural changes to our multi -stakeholder multi- species planet require sensitive engagement, creativity and collaboration. Art has unique capacities to leverage deep meanings for this change in the context of entrenched problems and positions. Artists can play a pivotal role in reframing world views towards a sustainable and healthy future for all.
ARISE will produce a range of resources to support art -research collaborations in sustainability, including research findings, a toolkit for best practice and new structures within the UCD Parity Studios residency programme. These resources will enable researchers to collaborate in a reciprocal and fair way with artists and will open up new avenues to share and communicate research with diverse audiences. On a national level the project aims to create connections across Ireland in this area. It aims to increase the scope of the UCD Parity residencies to support site specific research and develop practical resources for artists and researchers working at local level.
We will be announcing open calls for artists and researchers in 2025 and look forward to working in partnership with IMMA to bring you workshops and talks later in the year.
ARISE is led by Emer O’Boyle, Creative Director and Co-Founder of UCD Parity Studios, in partnership with Caitríona Devery from UCD Earth Institute, Dr Shane McGuinness from the WaterLANDS project and Sheena Barrett Head of Research and Learning at IMMA - Irish Museum of Modern Art.
Luke Casserly, residency 2024-25
Multidisciplinary performance maker (opens in a new window)Luke Casserly is undertaking a residency at the Earth Institute from 2024-25 as part of a Next Generation award from the Arts Council which he received in 2023. Luke was one of twenty artists selected for this award which supports emerging artists across all disciplines at an early and pivotal stage in their career.
Luke’s work weaves together environmental research, documentary, sound art, and site as a way of carving out space for new possibilities to emerge between live performance and physical landscape. To date, his projects have brought audiences through city streets, back gardens, train stations, beaches, and a bog in the Irish midlands. Most recently, he created Distillation (2023), a performative journey which takes you to the Irish bog landscape through scent and a co-production with the Abbey Theatre and Solas Nua in Washington DC.
Image from Distillation (2023) by Pato Cassinoni.
Eileen Hutton, workshop 2023
(opens in a new window)Eileen Hutton is a visual artist whose practice aims to generate reciprocal relationships with the more than human world and in the process create replicable models for informed ecological actions.
In 2023, Eileen joined us in the Earth Institute to discuss her work at a meeting with soil researchers and deliver a workshop on soil chromatography with members of the UCD Horticultural Society.
WaterLANDS artistic engagement residencies, 2022-26
Funded through the EU Horizon 2020 Green Deal, the 32-partner (opens in a new window)WaterLANDS project led by UCD aims to contribute to the restoration of wetland sites across Europe which have been damaged by human activity and is laying the foundations for protection across larger areas.
(opens in a new window)Six Artistic Engagement Residencies have been established with the support of the Earth Institute where artists are engaging with the project and the local communities at each of the restoration sites in Bulgaria, Estonia, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
The aim of these four-year part-time residencies is to frame restoration in different ways, helping us to see the project, and wetland restoration, in a new light. Find out more about each of the artists and their work below.
Deirdre O'Mahony, 2021-2022
(opens in a new window)Deirdre O’Mahony has been working for over 30 years across sculpture, painting, installation, collaborative and participatory projects. At the centre of this work is her interest in the politics of landscape, rural/urban relationships, rural sustainability, and food security.
Deirdre was artist-in-residence at the Earth Institute in partnership with Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council and UCD Parity Studios from 2021/22. Her major new work, The Quickening, was commissioned by the Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art and exhibited in 2024. Recent projects and exhibitions include Eat Food Policy, feast and event, Kunstverein Aughrim (2023); Sustainment Experiments feasts and exhibition at Butler Gallery, Kilkenny (2022); PLOT 1, VISUAL Carlow (2021 – 2024); PLOT 11 Gangwon Triennale Korea(2021).
Deirdre O’Mahony, The Quickening Production still (2023). Photography by Tom Flanagan. Commissioned by The Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art, Dublin.
Mark Clare, 2020-21
(opens in a new window)Mark Clare (b.1968) is an artist whose practice embraces a variety of media and techniques, ranging from audio, animation, and video to photography, performance, and public interventions. Mark was artist-in-residence at the Earth Institute in partnership with Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council and (opens in a new window)UCD Parity Studios from 2020/21 and continues to collaborate with the Institute and its members. Mark has previously exhibited at Crawford Art Gallery with I Believe In You (2014), and at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris and Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.
Still from (opens in a new window)eidolons by Mark Clare, an artwork and animated film consisting of AI-generated drawings and animations of each of the 26 insect species that the island of Ireland has lost in the last 100 years