Winter Preview with Sarah Browne

This Winter Preview is designed to share insight into some of the creative processes Browne uses within her artistic practice. The event begins with a warming welcome drink and short guided tactile tour of Browne’s exhibition Tógaimid ár dteanga le carraigeacha, introduced by curator Kate Strain. Visitors will be invited to handle a cast of objects that Browne has found, adapted, and thought through. Following an introduction to the wider questions driving Browne’s practice, visitors will walk together to a nearby venue, for an in-person presentation on (Soma)tic Rituals by CAConrad.

CAConrad is an internationally celebrated poet who has been working with the ancient technologies of poetry and ritual since 1975. At the core of their creative process is their practice of (Soma)tic rituals. During this presentation, CA will share their methods and read from their work, introducing their personal practice of (Soma)tic rituals and sharing exercises they have created to stimulate and support the writing process using ‘any possible THING around or of the body to channel the body out and/or in toward spirit with deliberate and sustained concentration’.

Following this a nourishing lunch made specially by Cow House Studios will be available for purchase. Everyone is invited to eat together, picnic style, returning after to the Kunstverein to peruse Sarah Hayden’s publication as if [...] wearing anklesocks, at their leisure. The event wraps up around 3pm, with a cosy drink by the fire at a local pub.

Schedule
11am: Introduction to Sarah Browne’s exhibition at Kunstverein Aughrim
12pm: Presentation on (Soma)tic Rituals by CAConrad
2pm: Lunch by Cow House Studios
3pm: Fireside drink and farewell

Biographies:

Sarah Browne is an artist based in Ireland concerned with spoken and unspoken, bodily experiences of knowledge, labour and justice. Her practice involves sculpture, film, performance and publishing, often in collaboration with others. Recent public projects include Echo’s Bones (2022, commissioned by Fingal County Council); Public feeling (2019, commissioned by South Dublin County Council); and In the Shadow of the State(2016, with Jesse Jones: a site-specific cycle of workshops and performances in Derry, Liverpool, Dublin and London, commissioned by Create and Artangel). She has had solo exhibitions at Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh, County Cork; Marabouparken, Stockholm; Institute of Modern Art Brisbane; CCA Derry~Londonderry; Project Arts Centre, Dublin; Ikon, Birmingham and CAG, Vancouver. In 2020 she curated TULCA Festival of Visual Arts, Galway, with a project titled The Law is a White Dog. Significant group exhibitions Browne has participated in include Bergen Assembly (2019), Liverpool Biennial (2016) and the Irish Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009) with Gareth Kennedy and Kennedy Browne. She is associate artist with University College Dublin College of Social Sciences and Law.

CAConrad is the author of numerous collections of poetry and 'one of America's most legendary living poets' (Ocean Vuong). Publications include Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return (2024), You Don’t Have What It Takes to Be My Nemesis: And Other (Soma)tics(2023), Amanda Paradise: Resurrect Extinct Vibration(2021), While Standing in Line for Death (2017), ECODEVIANCE: (Soma)tics for the Future Wilderness(2014), and The Book of Frank (2010) which is now available in 9 different languages. As a young poet they lived in Philadelphia, where they lost many loved ones during the early years of the AIDS crisis, as documented in the essay SIN BUG: AIDS, Poetry, and Queer Resilience in Philadelphia. In 2005 they began working with (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals. They have received many grants and awards, including the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award, a Creative Capital grant, a Pew Fellowship, and a Lambda Award. They exhibit poems as art objects with recent solo shows in Tucson, Arizona, as well as in Spain and Portugal. They currently live in Massachusetts, and teach at the Sandberg Art Institute in Amsterdam.

Sarah Hayden is a London-based Irish writer and Professor of Experimental Writing and Art at the University of Southampton. Her work explores intersections of voice, text, access and art. Recent publications include an essay on captioning as “unvoiceover” for Angelaki and an essay for Charlie Prodger at secession Vienna (both 2023). She is currently writing a book on voice in art for University of Minnesota Press and collaborating with Liza Sylvestre and Christopher Robert Jones on the Blue Description Project. She has a background in poetry, recently presenting a trio of lecture-poems, Teacher Voice Treatment (in text and audio) on SpamPlaza.