ARCHIVE:

Orla O’Kane

September, famously one of the shorter months, is when the evident changing season might cause us to pay more attention to our surroundings. It allows us to reflect, cheerily, on natural decay, impermanence and change.

Appropriately, the theme for this year’s Making In, Joseph Walsh’s annual festival in beautiful West Cork, is Circle. It promises a consideration of the cyclical and consequential in the measure and making of art, architecture, fashion, gastronomy, and performance. Featuring architect Shigeru Ban, landscape architect Hiroyuki Tsujii, writer and critic Paul Goldberger, it is also the unveiling of the third and final Rambling House, the collaboration with longstanding Making In contributors O’Donnell + Tuomey.

Similarly, the feature documentary Ag Lorg Hy Brasil ruminates on an ancient, mythical island off the Connemara coast that inspired Ireland’s pavilion at the 2023 Venice Biennale. It focuses on balancing the delicate equilibrium between culture and nature. Launching the following weekend, .WAY, an exhibition by Brock Finucane, showcases work and research on the Klew Bay town of Mulranny, exploring how to engage with a moving coastal landscape shaped and scarred by both the static and dynamic. Both take place as part of Architecture at the Edge Festival 2024. Almost conversely, Architecture Kerry’s programme includes a one day seminar, in partnership with the Irish Georgian Society, exploring the more direct interference of art embracing nature through the historic designed landscapes of County Kerry.

For more urban reflection, Shane Lynam’s Pebbledash Wonderland is opening at Photo Museum Ireland, a personal and intuitive mapping of encounters with the streets and buildings of Dublin communicated through multiple textures of place, as witness to a decade of profound transformation. Meanwhile Pru:f, a group exhibition by Black Church Print Studio at The Library Project curated by Sarah Pierce, celebrates the partially complete and unseen as evidence of art’s uncanny ability to represent the unrepresentable.

Don’t miss the opportunity to enjoy the erudite and irreverent Shane deBlacam in conversation with TAKA Architects and Marko Milovanovic on the 27th, (also part of AATE) or the launch of the AAI’s series of housing lectures on the 19th with Peris + Toral. Not to forget the magnificent range of events and spaces open on Culture Night.

Finally, on what will hopefully be a delightful autumnal Saturday, there is a chance to wander around Belfast on one or more of multiple RSUA architect-led building tours; including The Bank Building, The Printworks and Áras Uí Chonghaile. At IMMA, you have until the end of the month to catch We Realised The Power Of It, the history of the radical film collective Derry Film and Video Workshop, or visit Carlow, to see Superposition’s An Experimental House at the Visual.