Wexford Arts Centre

Curated by Kay Aplin & Joseph Young of The Ceramic House in partnership with Irish curator & sound artist Richard Carr, the Edges exhibition at Wexford Arts Centre (WAC) explores ceramics and sound art practice through the work of artists from three nations at the western and eastern fringes of Europe – Ireland, UK and Estonia. The works were developed as part of artist residencies and international exchanges, creating collaborative encounters across the two disciplines.

Edges explores what it means to work at the edge of something and how we understand the outsider. Edges also expands on the idea of artistic practice as a so-called ‘cutting edge’, through the investigation of geographical boundaries and coastlines of the host nations.

The exhibition at WAC is the result of three separate artist residencies and one new commission. All of the artworks exhibited can be seen as works-in-progress or experimental iterations, made under tight time constraints and in response to place and site.

The first residency took place in April 2022 at The Ceramic House (supported by i-Portunus European funding) pairing two sound artists from Ireland, Linda O’Keeffe and Suzanne Walsh, with Estonian ceramists Juss Heinsalu and Pille Kaleviste. Over a period of four weeks, they worked together in pairs and the resulting exhibition Peripheries was shown as part of the Brighton Artists Open Houses festival.

The second residency at Interface in the Inagh Valley, Connemara in June 2023, saw Aplin and Young exploring the Connemara landscape, accompanied by curator Richard Carr, in a series of walks and wanderings, gathering binaural sound recordings and plant, fossil, lichen specimens as they went.

The third residency took place at Watts Gallery & Artist Village, Surrey (Oct-Dec 2023), the former home of celebrated artist couple, George Frederic and Mary Watts. Here, Kay and Joseph explored a more personal take on encounters through partnership, both through the lens of their own relationship and the creation of The Ceramic House, their artist home, which was conceived and developed by Kay.

Additionally, the curators commissioned ceramic artist Katharine West (IE) and sound artist Patrick Tubin McGinley (EE) – selecting pre-existing works to be displayed together creating a dialogue in the gallery space and uncovering new ways of listening and viewing the material (clay) and the ephemeral (sound).