Sculpture in the Parklands News

From Earth to Sky by Alfio Bonanno will be featured in the Chinese Public Art and Ecology magazine for the August edition.
The magazine will feature Sculpture in the Parklands in a 12 page article by John Grande (SIP 2010 writer in residence) and a 16 page interview by John with Alfio Bonanno on his career over 40 years. The interview was carried out during John's residency in Lough Boora. Please click here to read the articles.

Photographs used of the 2002 International Sculpture Symposium and the Patrick Dougherty installation (labelled Johan Sietzema)
were taken by our photographer in residence James Fraher.

From Earth to Sky - Alfio Bonanno

Sculpture in the Parklands 2010 The official launch of Alfio Bonanno sculpture "From Earth to Sky" will take place at Sculpture in the Parklands on September 25th at 2pm. The sculpture will be officially launched by sculptor Mike Bulfin. An artist’s reception will take place at The Boora Inn from 4pm.

For the 2010 edition of Sculpture in the Parklands, Danish sculptor Alfio Bonanno familiarized himself with the grounds at Lough Boora. Initially inspired by the vast dark peat landscape and ancient bogwood forest, upon hearing the sound of running water he recognized a powerfully symbolic site for his environmental project. With a central conical tower structure and a steel inner core made by and referencing the industrial history of the workers at Bord na Mona, Bonanno’s “shelter” involved the gathering and collecting of 4,000 year old bogwood from the peat lands. The collected bogwood was integrated as a textural and graphic outer wall for the work. A stream from the neighbouring wetlands flows through Bonanno’s structure into the centre. The energy and life generated by the sound of water as it enters, flows through and descends to a underground stream establishes links with the surrounding ecosystems of the peat lands. With sound as an animating element, entering into the inner space, and a series of found stones and boulders within.

Alfio Bonanno’s eight metre high Bogwood Tower references the oldest archaeological site from the Megalithic era in Ireland less than a mile away. In Bonanno’s own words, “One of my earlier environmental sculptures from 1982, Granite Environment incorporated stones from ancient burial grounds in an area undergoing redevelopment in Denmark where they were found. I see the present Irish work being made here in County Offaly as a continuity of this earlier work, in that both reference archaeology and our human links to ancient culture. This piece is an homage to our ancestors and the physical layered landscape of peat, clay and stone they lived upon.” Entering into Bonanno’s "From Earth to Sky", the landscape surrounds seen through the light sensitive walls of bogwood create dramatic visual contrasts, while the circular ceiling of the structure remains an open sky vault. With the sound of moving water as it enters the heart of the structure, and moving skyscape above, Bonanno’s structure is a celebration of the long-standing and eternal cycle of exchange between culture of nature and humanity.

Alfio Bonanno
Artist in Residence ~ September 2010
More info

Brandon Ballengee
Artist in Residence ~ July 19th to July 31st 2010
View on Youtube

Click here for Sculpture in the Parklands map and brochure

Sculpture in the Parklands is hosting a 5-day summer school programme for 7 – 12 year olds from Monday July 19 th to Friday July 23 rd 2010. The Heritage Council and Offaly County Council are supporting the programme, which is celebrating International Year of Biodiversity.

International environmental artist, Brandon Ballengee, will deliver an interactive workshop for 7 to 12 year olds that will explore, discuss and celebrate local biodiversity as well as look at insect and amphibian diversity from around the world. Participants will enjoy a range of activities including creating bog journals, making and using butterfly nets, exploring aquatic micro –fauna of the bogs, creating insect portraits at a human scale, painting insect murals, creating bug sculptures from natural materials, creating a dance for the Insect Festival on the final day and participating in an insect kite making workshop.

Guest artists, Legitimate Bodies Dance Company, will work with the students over the 5-days in preparation for the final day celebration that incorporates the artwork, dance and bog journal data. This programme will provide children with the opportunity to explore their unique landscape as well as create works of art based on their research. This summer school will be informative and fun!

Programme hours are from 10am to 4.00pm daily with snack and lunch breaks. Participants will provide their own food. The programme is limited to 25 participants and the €50 summer school fee will have to be paid with the application to book a place.

Application forms can be downloaded here.

Click here for a list of upcoming events at Sculpture in the Parklands in 2010.

Sculpture in the Parklands receives Heritage Council Funding for Innovative Education Programme

Sculpture in the Parklands is pleased to announce that it has recently received Heritage Council funding for an innovative education programme that explores the boundaries between art, science and technology. Internationally renowned artist and scientist Brandon Ballengee will deliver an education programme over a two-week period from July 19 th to July 30 th that will focus on the rich biodiversity of the Lough Boora Parklands. The programme will include a week -long education programme for primary school age children, one-day workshops for all ages and a series of lectures and night walks to discover the rich nocturnal biodiversity of the Boora bogs.

Since 1996, Ballengee has collaborated with scientists to create hybrid environmental art/ecological research projects. He is directly involved with field study research and uses the visual impact of science to engage the public in a discussion of broader environmental issues. Brandon states “My work attempts to blur the already ambiguous boundaries between environmental art and ecological research”. In an interview with art critic and environmental writer John Grande he states, “I believe art can change the way people see the world. Joseph Beuys bathed and swam in bogs to raise awareness about these sensitive ecosystems. Sharing Beuys fondness for mud, my work is created from information, species and other materials collected on field surveys or generated in biology laboratories. By bringing the public along, I try to bridge communities to local eco-systems and the great diversity of life found within them and also the causes of degradation.”

Kevin O’Dwyer, Director of the Sculpture in the Parklands states: “ We are delighted to receive funding from the Heritage Council and Offaly County Council Heritage office for this imaginative and innovative project. The programme will be informative, fun and relevant to environmental issues in the 21 st century. I had the pleasure to work with Brandon at Yorkshire Sculpture Park during his residency in 2007. I hope this will be an ongoing relationship as his work is important with engaging the public and informing them of the rich biodiversity of the Boora Bogs.”

During Brandon’s residency he will install a large canvas screen into the sculpture park entitled Love Motel for Insects. The installation will use ultra violet lights on the enormous blank canvas to attract insects and this will create an opportunity for public interaction with nocturnal arthropods, which are not often seen. This is an ongoing project that has been installed across the world from tropical rain forests, inner city bus stops, Brownfield sites, Scottish Highlands, German city centres and Venetian boats as part of the Venice Biennial. At each site the insects arrive onto the canvas to reproduce and create pheromone paintings! Members of the public will be invited to participate in night walks to the Love Motel installation and Brandon will talk about our nocturnal insect friends as well as document the rich insect biodiversity in the landscape. The last weekend of the residency will culminate with an Insect Festival, which will exhibit the artwork and insect documentation over the two preceding two weeks.

Brandon’s artworks have been exhibited in Australia, Asia, Europe and the Americas. Recent solo exhibitions include, Nowhere Gallery (Milan), the Shrewsbury Museum (Shropshire, Charles Darwin’s birthplace), the Arsenal Gallery in Central Park (NYC), the Peabody Museum Of Natural History (Yale University). He has co-taught ecology art and neotropical evolution courses in Costa Rica for Hartwick College and he regularly conducts ecology/field biology/genetics and digital imagining workshops open to the general public at urban parks, wetlands, zoos and fish markets. In 2001 he was nominated for membership into Sigma XI, the Scientific Research Society. His lead authored article (with Dr. Stanley K Sessions), “Explanation for Missing Limbs in Deformed Amphibians” was published in 2009 in Journal of Experimental Zoology and received international media attention from the BBC and others.

O’Dwyer states, “ This is the International Year of Biodiversity and I can’t think of a better way to celebrate the year in the sculpture park. I hope that the public will support Brandon’s programme so that we will be able to deliver additional education programmes in the future. I’d like to thank the Heritage Council, Amanda Pedlow, Heritage officer with Offaly County Council, Alex Copeland of Bird Watch Ireland, Tom Egan and Dr. Catherine Farrell of Bord na Mona and the Lough Boora Parklands Group for their enthusiasm and support for this project. The sculpture park was founded on the rich industrial and natural heritage of Lough Boora and this project continues with its mission to engage the public and celebrate our cultural and environmental heritage.”

culpture in the Parklands will host a free public lecture by Brandon Ballengee at 7.30pm on April 29 th in Teach Lea community hall. We will have further information on the July workshops at the lecture. The primary school workshop will be limited to 20 students and will take place from July 19 th to 23 rd. Further information will be available in April from Kevin O’Dwyer, Sculpture in the Parklands, Amanda Pedlow, Offaly Heritage Officer and by visiting the Sculpture in the Parklands website www.sculptureintheparklands.com. Booking places for workshop at info@sculptureintheparklands.com.

The Lough Boora Parklands are a unique public landscape feature in the Midlands of Ireland. With a tradition of supporting artistic intervention in the landscape, the Sculpture in the Parklands project under the directorship of Kevin O’Dwyer provides an opportunity for Land Art interventions within the rich and diverse cultural landscape of the Midlands of Ireland. Resonating with the industrial heritage of peat extraction, human interaction with wetlands and boglands and with rural community arts projects, the setting of the Sculpture in the Parklands project provides a superb scenario for the exploration of themes of landscape transformation, human agency and environmental and ecological sustainability.

Sculpture in the Parklands in collaboration with the Archaeology Department at University College Dublin will participate in a European Union Cultural programme entitled Trans Form Actions, which will invite international artists to respond to unique landscapes and archaeological sites across Europe. Trans Form Actions will involve Architecture, Archaeology, Landscape Architecture, Performance and Installation Art. The objective is to involve a wide series of partners into the changing of different landscapes through the action of artists (in the broad sense mentioned). There will be a close emphasis on a strategy of dissemination of the action. Through this the programme will build a wider sustainable European cultural network related to art landscape transformation.

The collaboration between University College Dublin and Sculpture in the Parklands will also allow for academic and artistic investment in local, rural communities in Offaly through the provision of public lectures and guided tours by members of the academic community of University College Dublin. There will also be an exhibition and presentations of the results of the interventions as well as of other interventions in the Trans Form Actions project.

he project will be organised in collaboration with and executed by Kevin O’Dwyer of Sculpture in the Parklands, Lough Boora Parklands. Professor Gabriel Cooney (Archaeology UCD), Pat Cooke (Cultural Policy UCD) and Dr. Ian Russell (Archaeology UCD) will support the programme over the two-year period. Invited artists include renowned environmental artist Alfio Bonanno and performance artist Nigel Rolfe who will be in artist in residence in 2010. The original music composition for Quartet “Black is the Earth” by Adele O’Dwyer will be recorded and performed at UCD, Lough Boora Parklands and Tullamore as part of the programme of events to celebrate this unique collaboration.

Dermot Foley Landscape Architects received the prestigious Irish Landscape Institute Design Award in the Heritage and Conservation category for it's Sculpture in the Parklands Landscape Strategy. The award was received by Dermot Foley at Dublin Castle on November 12th during the annual Irish Landscape Institute Design Awards.

Irish Landscape Institute Judges' Comments:

'A sophisticated and imaginative project, which resolves a conflict between its two heritages - industry and ecology. The work prepares within this previously industrial landscape a subtle and ordered structure that allows the artworks to respond to the place, while allowing the ecology and biodiversity to evolve. It acknowledges the cultural heritage and works as an underpinning landscape strategy; responding to the latent geometries of the site, both natural and man-made. It is a project of renewal and invention, and the openness and easy access provided is to be highly lauded. A contemporary and artful intervention, which brings visitors to a previously industrial bogland - highlighting succession and the interaction between nature and art in a very delicate and fragile landscape. It is also positive to see the project continuing at a careful pace that includes addition and management.'

The Landscape Strategy will provide an important template for Sculpture in the Parklands to continue to develop its programme and make the landscape accessible to the public. Sculpture in the Parklands congratulates the team at Dermot Foley Landscape Architects and looks forward to working with them in the future.

We will be loading artists interviews and photo documentation of previous installations over the coming months. Please visit and enjoy Julian Wild and Alan Counihan's residency at the sculpture park.

Thank you to Ian Russell and Trans Form Actions http://www.transformactions.eu/ collaborative project for making this possible.

Sculpture in the Parklands received the Corporate and Cultural/Social Responsibility Award at this year's Business to Arts award ceremony. The award was presented by President Mary McAleese at Castletown House on May 20th.

Bord na Móna's ongoing partnership with Sculpture in the Parklands, Offaly County Council Arts Office and the 2008 collaboration with the Crafts Council of Ireland stood out for the judges as an exemplary Corporate and Cultural Social Responsibility programme. The success of this initiative is equally due to the financial investment and engagement of Offaly County Council and the Crafts Council of Ireland. In 2008, the combined partnership secured world-renowned environmental artist Patrick Dougherty for the residency, who created the monumental Ruaille Buaille . In 2008, Sculpture in the Parklands was included in the programme of the International Peat Congress, introducing delegates to a potential use for cutaway bogs.

Sculpture in the Parklands is a community recreational facility that is open 365 days of the year from dawn to dusk. It provides an opportunity for visitors to interact with contemporary works of art by internationally renowned artists in a relaxed environment. In 2008, a hands-on educational programme for 17 primary schools and a series of master-classes for crafts people was also included in the residency.

This year's residency programme will be held during the month of September. Invited artists for the programme are Julian Wild (U.K.) and Alan Counihan (Ireland).

All the Winning projects in this year's Allianz Business to Arts Awards will be featured in the Sunday Independent this coming Sunday .

From Earth to Sky - Alfio Bonanno

Alfio Bonanno Artist in Residence ~ September 2010 More info

Brandon Ballengee Artist in Residence ~ July 19th to July 31st 2010 View on Youtube

Click here for Sculpture in the Parklands map and brochure

Alfio Bonanno
Artist in Residence ~ September 2010
More info

Brandon Ballengee
Artist in Residence ~ July 19th to July 31st 2010
View on Youtube