Kate Strain

Community update with Kate Strain

Kate Strain is the Artistic Director of Grazer Kunstverein. Based between Graz, Austria and Dublin, her ongoing curatorial projects include Department of Ultimology, a new department established with Fiona Hallinanin in 2016 at Trinity College Dublin and RGKSKSRG, the paired curatorial practice of Rachael Gilbourne and Kate Strain.

We were fortunate to work with Kate on two projects. The first, I like to eat with my hands, took place in 2015 under the collaborative practice RGKSKSRG. The second, The Centre For Dying On Stage #3, took place in 2016 with the support of The Arts Council‘s Curator in Residence scheme. Kate generously took some time out of her hectic schedule to answer a few of our questions.

Richard John Jones Public Sculpture

Richard John Jones Public Sculpture

During the week beginning March 17th, 2018, during our Open Residency programme, artist Richard John Jones installed his work Public Sculpture, a figure without a body. We hope for this to be the first of many public sculptures in the woods adjacent to the Cow House. This installation found its beginnings as a work included in the exhibition The Plough And Other Stars curated by Kate Strain in 2016 at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. This exhibition was associated with our own 2016 residency The Centre For Dying On Stage #3 also curated by our then curator in residence, Kate Strain. We were thrilled when shortly after the exhibition we were contacted by both Richard and Kate who proposed the farm as a permanent home for the work. After much coordination, it was wonderful to see the successful installation despite some fairly horrific weather. Special thanks to artist Deirdre Buggy who took time out of her busy schedule to help Richard with the installation. We look forward to sharing this special addition to the farm with our future visitors.

SV Randall

  Community update with SV Randall SV Randall was one of five artists invited to participate in our 2016 autumn artist residency, The Centre for Dying on Stage. He is an interdisciplinary artist working with sculpture, photography and installation to examine the relationship between consumer, commodity, and transformation. His artist statement asserts that “Within a culture of feverish consumption and […]

The Centre For Dying On Stage: Performance Date & Times

Date & Time: Saturday, November 12 at 3pm

Location: Wexford Arts Centre

Performance by artists Jessica Foley, Marjorie Potiron & Lisa Hoffmann, Steven Randall, and Alex Mirutziu AKA The Artist and Himself at 29 (TAH29)

Please click here to purchase tickets.

A bus is scheduled to depart from the Irish Museum of Modern Art at 12:30pm and return at 9pm.

Ticket includes:

I like to eat with my hands: Exhibition

Wexford Arts Centre
Saturday 27th August at 3pm

The exhibition I like to eat with my hands is the outcome of our 2015 Autumn Residency residency involving five contemporary, international artists. The participants were artists Taro Furukata, Ann Maria Healy, dancer/choreographer Claire Huber and writer/artist duo KVM – Ju Hyun Lee and Ludovic Burel.

For a period of eight-weeks in autumn last year, they re-located their practices to our deeply rural environment at Cow House Studios. Together, they immersed themselves in research between the studios, the land and the shared accommodation, to create new work, share skills, and reflect on their own and others’ individual practices. Within this activity, the question was asked: can situating oneself within these new ‘Pig Earth’ surroundings potentially radicalise an existing working process?

Their answer comes to you in the form of this exhibition. It comes in the lonesomeness of Taro Furukata’s poignant attempts to assimilate (physically metabolising new spaces in the sanctity of his actual body) and to reach back home (phoning his Grandma for hand-me-down recipes); in Claire Huber’s struggle out of the physical and metaphysical confines of the body (dancing with and in nature in a wild and comic reach for meaning); in Ann Maria Healy’s search for spiritual guidance or resonance amongst dated mythological traditions (removed and ritualised in their almost but not quite kitsch physical form), and in KVM’s more than skin-deep transference of cultural mores (echoes of nasty cultural realities, warts and all).

RGKSKSRG is the paired curatorial practice of Rachael Gilbourne and Kate Strain.

Image: Ann Maria Healy, Beating to be real, 2016, HD video still.

The Centre For Dying On Stage

The Centre for Dying on Stage #3
Autumn Residency programme at Cow House Studios
10 October – 20 November 2016

Cow House Studios and Kate Strain are delighted to announce the participating artists for the upcoming residency programme: The Centre For Dying On Stage #3

The participants of the 2016 Cow House Studios Autumn residency programme are: Jessica Foley, Marjorie Potiron & Lisa Hoffmann, Steven Randall, and The Artist and Himself at 29 (TAH29). The five artists will be invited to reside at Cow House Studios from 10 October – 20 November, with the collective aim of producing an exhibition in the form of a play, to be realised at Wexford Arts Centre, on 11 & 12 November 2016. We look forward to welcoming the incoming resident artists in October.

You can read more about The Centre For Dying On Stage here…

How to Flatten a Mountain 2016 Exhibition

Launch: 7th July, 6:30pm
Running: 8-24 July
Location: Rathfarnham Castle

How to Flatten a Mountain is the title of this exhibition, which marks the culmination of a residency that ran for the first time this year between May 23 and June 1. The residency focused on emerging and mid-career visual artists whose practice in whole or part, makes use of digital or analogue photographic processes.

Congratulations to Kate Strain

We are incredibly excited by the announcement that Kate Strain has been appointed the new artistic director of the Grazer Kunstverein, Austria. Kate is our curator for the 2016 Residency program The Centre for Dying On Stage and previously curated our 2015 residency program I like to eat with my hands with Rachel Gilbourne as part of the paired curatorial […]

Penn Charter Spring Break Group Class

Over the course of seven nights, students from Penn Charter School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania were challenged to observe, explore, collect and curate during their time on our farm and while in Dublin. For this trip, we explored ideas around building and editing collections and how this process might yield unexpected narratives. Through a variety of practical […]

The Centre for Dying on Stage #3

International Autumn Residency Programme Dates: 11 September – 13 November 2016 Submission deadline: 10 April 2016 Selected artists contacted: 1 May 2016 We are happy to announce the open call for our 2016 Autumn residency. The Centre For Dying On Stage, curated by Kate Strain, is the third endeavour allied with her ongoing research project […]

Hallucination! on the Farm

Schnitzen einer Teufelsmaske, 1965 – Gareth Kennedy, research image as part of Die unbequeme Wissenschaft (The Uncomfortable Science), 2014 Cow House Studios | Hallowe’en Open Day Saturday 31 October 2015, 12noon – 5pm  Please join us for Hallucination! On the Farm as Cow House Studios hosts its annual Open Day. This year, guests are invited […]