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Array Collective presents The Goose and the Common, a new exhibition commissioned by Rua Red. Upending the language of protest, surveillance, defence and displacement the collective invites the viewer to journey through a series of spaces where organising and collaboration are encouraged.

As we find ourselves in this polemic moment of “ussuns” vs “themmuns” it is important that we continue to find our voices and make noise. It’s equally important to recognise those who are restricted from speaking up and how acts of solidarity exist beyond the streets.

Visitors to the gallery can make use of the wearable pieces and take a moment of rest, work together in weaving or sing out in solidarity.

The exhibition takes its title from the 18th century poem The Goose and the Common, a reaction to a colonial legislative act that privatized common land. The central theme of the poem revolves around the hypocrisy of laws that punish individuals for minor thefts while allowing the elite to steal communal resources for their own personal gain without any consequence.

Join us for the launch of Array Say Relax by Sarah Clancy at Rua Red on Feb 27, 6pm talk with Array Collective + Q&A. Following the launch of The Goose and the Common by Array Collective at Rua Red, we are pleased to present a new publication featuring a critical response by acclaimed poet and activist Sarah Clancy.

To celebrate the launch of the publication, join us for an engaging discussion between members of Array Collective and Sarah Clancy, followed by an audience Q&A.

This event is free and open to all, come be part of the conversation!

About Sarah Clancy
Sarah Clancy is an award-winning poet and activist. Clancy has published three poetry collections, Stacey and the Mechanical Bull (Lapwing Press 2011), Thanks for Nothing, Hippies (Salmon Poetry 2012) and The Truth and Other Stories (Salmon Poetry 2014) and has had her work published in ‘Queering the Green’ (The Lifeboat 2022) and ‘The Art of Place – People and Landscape of County Clare’ (Liffey Press 2021).

In 2021 her poem Cherishing for Beginners was the subject of a poetry-film collaboration between the Aidan Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation and IMMA and was shown as part of the Ghosts from the Recent Past Exhibition. Her work has been published and anthologised in Ireland, Canada, Mexico, Nicaragua, Slovenia, Spain, Poland and the USA.

She works in community development and has been involved in many campaigns including those concerning socio economic rights, marriage equality, reproductive and migrant rights.

Marianne Keating is a London-based Irish artist whose practice examines intersecting and overlooked narratives of Irish emigration—initially through indentured labour—to the Caribbean, particularly Jamaica, where the Irish were recruited as a new labour force after the abolition of enslavement. and the broader legacies of British imperialism in Ireland, Jamaica, and beyond. Keating's film installations combine a range of archival materials, found footage, newly shot footage, text, and sound.

This event is part of Re-rooting Tallaght, Performance Art Festival 2024.

To mark the final day of the programme join us for a panel discussion with Re-rooting Tallaght curators Paul Regan and Lauren Kelly, who will be discussing the week of performances and the wider context of performance in Ireland.

Following the talk there will be a performance jam in the Rua Red Performance Space starting from 2pm, with the artists that took part in Re-rooting Tallaght. The aim of this performance jam is to create dialogs between artists without rehearsals and focus purely on the live action. You are invited to come along and watch to mark the ending of this years Tallaght Performance Art Festival.

Over the last 18 months Luxembourg artists Stéphanie Rollin and David Brognon have embedded themselves within the community of Tallaght as part of a residency and new commission for Rua Red. The commission titled ‘Templates of Chance’ engages with the process of recovery from addiction and demonstrates how failure, pushing through and progression are an essential part of the process.

Brognon Rollin have been working with people who are on the journey of recovery, with support from addiction services in South Dublin County, specifically JAAD (Jobstown Assisting Drug Dependency) and Tallaght Drug and Alcohol Taskforce, and local community leaders Senator Lynn Ruane and Councillor Mick Duff.

The legacy and importance of what is left behind following a commission is central to Brognon Rollin’s practice. These tokens will be distributed into the centres of recovery and used throughout the county by the community that designed them.

Join us on Culture Night, Friday 20th September, for a conversation between artists Marianne Keating and Brian Hand, where they will discuss the themes and methodologies of An Ciúnas/The Silence.

Marianne Keating is a London-based Irish artist whose practice examines intersecting and overlooked narratives of Irish emigration—initially through indentured labour—to the Caribbean, particularly Jamaica, where the Irish were recruited as a new labour force after the abolition of enslavement. and the broader legacies of British imperialism in Ireland, Jamaica, and beyond. Keating's film installations combine a range of archival materials, found footage, newly shot footage, text, and sound.

Brian Hand’s art practice is broadly concerned with creatively exploring and researching events in the past. Brian makes temporary public work and time-based installations often in site-specific locations. Brian has a deep interest in post-colonial historiography and the limits of historical representation. In the past, he believes, we can find alternative images that disrupt the naturalness of the present. He has made work addressing art and politics through researching secret societies, prisons, suffragettes, the archive, the great famine and the invention of the Irish Wolfhound.

This Culture Night 2024 Rua Red's Galleries will remain open until 10pm. Come along for a look at Rua Red's exhibition, An Ciúnas/The Silence by Marianne Keating. This tour will be followed by an In-Conversation with Marianne Keating and Brian Hand. All ages welcome, but please keep in mind that the tour is discussion-led.

In this Looking and Thinking tour facilitated by Kimberly Griffith-Walsh, participants are encouraged to share their reactions to An Ciúnas/The Silence, while hearing and considering the ideas of others. The tour will use a technique called Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS). This is an interactive way of looking at art, which relies on audience participation to collaboratively build a discussion. VTS provides an opportunity to come together and practice looking, talking, listening and engaging with art and each other. In VTS, the discussion is moved forward by your ideas and observations.

Kimberly Griffith Walsh is Rua Red's Education and Engagement Officer. She originally emigrated to Dublin as a Fulbright Scholar at Hugh Lane Gallery in 2018. Her research interests focus on the intersections of modern and contemporary art and culture in Ireland, with an emphasis on feminist and queer theory as praxis.

Rua Red is located in one of the most culturally rich and diverse counties in Ireland; over 60 languages are spoken and over 93 nationalities have made South Dublin County their home.

The new programme at Rua Red will look at the obstacles and rules that create social and cultural disconnection, preventing a sense of belonging to a place or community. Artists will explore themes such as power, displacement, hostility, global politics, and geopolitics and highlight the personal stories of displacement and belonging of the people of South Dublin County and beyond.

To kick start our programme Rua Red have invited South African Artist Candice Breitz to exhibit her work Love Story (2016), a seven-channel installation that interrogates the mechanics of identification and the conditions under which empathy is produced.

Love Story is based on the personal narratives of six individuals who have fled their countries in response to a range of oppressive conditions: Sarah Ezzat Mardini, who escaped war-torn Syria; José Maria João, a former child soldier from Angola; Mamy Maloba Langa, a survivor from the Democratic Republic of the Congo; Shabeena Francis Saveri, a transgender activist from India; Luis Ernesto Nava Molero, a political dissident from Venezuela; and Farah Abdi Mohamed, an idealistic young atheist from Somalia.

Each year Rua Red holds an annual open-call exhibition of fine and applied arts. Work is invited from artists in any discipline and at all career stages. The Open serves as a platform to support and encourage emerging and established artists. It is an opportunity to see the breadth and vibrancy of the work being created today and to find new and unexpected connections.

In Displacement and Belonging - Home, the selected artists are exploring the idea of 'Home'; What is home? Where is home? Is this my home? Thematics emerge such as migration, dislocation, and relocation; from the most personal sense of being connected to a place, and to each other, to the wider context of the prevailing disconnection and uncertainties in society today.

Mary Magdalene; A prostitute, a mad bitch, a woman only important because Jesus forgave her. Up until now, men have painted the picture of Mary Magdalene. Tina Malone is on a mission to clear her name. It’s 2022, we’re in an imaginary Tallaght. Neoliberalism is the prevailing faith based religion, and money gives men the power to buy any experience they want. John Brophy TD, a community activist with a Jesus complex, orders Tina to deliver ‘A Mary Magdalene Experience’. He wants Tina to play her as a fallen woman that he can save, but she won’t play that part. She’s discovered the ‘lost’ Gospel of Mary Magdalene, and she has a better idea.

Mary Magdalene; A prostitute, a mad bitch, a woman only important because Jesus forgave her. Up until now, men have painted the picture of Mary Magdalene. Tina Malone is on a mission to clear her name. It’s 2022, we’re in an imaginary Tallaght. Neoliberalism is the prevailing faith based religion, and money gives men the power to buy any experience they want. John Brophy TD, a community activist with a Jesus complex, orders Tina to deliver ‘A Mary Magdalene Experience’. He wants Tina to play her as a fallen woman that he can save, but she won’t play that part. She’s discovered the ‘lost’ Gospel of Mary Magdalene, and she has a better idea.

‘The Tower’, is a new work by artist Jesse Jones, and the third exhibition in the Magdalene Series at Rua Red, curated by Maolíosa Boyle. Jesse Jones’ new film installation is the second part in a trilogy beginning with ‘Tremble Tremble’, which was commissioned for the Irish Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017. Working with Rua Red dancers in residence Junk Ensemble, and a cast that includes actors Olwen Fouéré, Naomi Moonveld-Nkosi, and a young choir of performers, ‘The Tower’ turns to the figure of the mystic and the heretic and questions ‘Who came before the witches?'

The Map, a collaborative work by artists Alice Maher and Rachel Fallon is the second exhibition in the Magdalene Series at Rua Red, curated by Maolíosa Boyle. The Map is a monumental textile sculpture spanning the enormous space of Gallery One. With its own continents, winds, currents, and constellations, The Map draws the viewer in, inviting a reorientation.

The Map, a collaborative work by artists Alice Maher and Rachel Fallon is the second exhibition in the Magdalene Series at Rua Red, curated by Maolíosa Boyle. The Map is a monumental textile sculpture spanning the enormous space of Gallery One. With its own continents, winds, currents, and constellations, The Map draws the viewer in, inviting a reorientation.

‘They Come Then, The Birds’ is a new body of work by Artist Amanda Coogan commissioned by Rua Red as part of the Magdalene Series. Curated by Maolíosa Boyle, the series features five of Ireland’s leading artists responding to the figure of Mary Magdalene. Coogan’s work is inspired by the Wrens of the Curragh, a group of women who lived on the margins of society around the military camp at the Curragh, County Kildare, in the mid-nineteenth century.