Adrift in Wexford

National Tour: ADRIFT – by visual artist Els Dietvorst
Curated by Catherine Bowe and Karla Sánchez Zepeda
Commissioned by Wexford Arts Centre

15 October – 29 November 2024
Running concurrently at Wexford Arts Centre & Wexford County Council

Exhibition Opening: Saturday 12 October, 2024
Wexford County Council at 2pm
Wexford Arts Centre at 4pm

All welcome to attend.
Wine reception with finger food served.

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Wexford Arts Centre is working collaboratively with Highlanes Gallery, Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre, and Wexford County Council to tour the work of Els Dietvorst. The tour began at the Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda in 2023, continued at Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre from March to May of this year, and will be shown concurrently in Wexford Arts Centre and Wexford County Council this October to December.

In the two final installations of the tour ADRIFT, curators Catherine Bowe and Karla Sánchez highlight and revisit various pieces meaningful both to artist and the Irish individuals and communities she has been building relationships with over the last decade. At Wexford Arts Centre, the artist will explore primeval feelings and ideas, playing with materials such as light, wood and clay. Wexford County Council will house a piece about human resilience.

In ADRIFT, Dietvorst continues to explore and reflect through her work on the limits of human existence – how we relate to nature and how we relate to one another, as the quality of these relationships will determine the kind of possibilities we can create for our future. Her practice is remarkably diverse and comprises drawings, prints, sculptures, installations, films and documentaries, performative actions, and one-act plays. The motivating factor behind this activity is the desire to connect, develop relationships, and collaborate with others. As the artist states ‘For me, creation is a collective process, inclusive and permeable to the world, to the living and the dead, to small neglected objects as well as to each other’s ideas.’ Towards this end, Dietvorst uses dialogue, experiment, intuition, and collaboration as artistic strategies.

The title ADRIFT is a metaphor for how the artist sees our contemporary world as being not anchored but floating freely without a sense of purpose or direction.  Showing an appreciation for what we usually consider to be different, undesirable, or inferior, Dietvorst explores life histories, interpersonal dialogues, migration and cultural differences, human dreams and desires, and the human condition. She pays specific attention to the position of the outsider and focuses her gaze – sometimes over a period of several years – on people and events that would otherwise go unnoticed.

An exhibition of work by a selection of fourth year art students from South East Technological University – Wexford School of Art & Design will run in D’lush Café at Wexford Arts Centre from Saturday 12th October to Thursday 7th November. The exhibition runs alongside Adrift in the main galleries, and features work by Anna Bekmansurova, Susan Birney Gossage, Patricia Cavenagh, Joe Doyle, Alicia Fortune, Sadhbh McCarthy McCool, Cody McEvoy and Jane Mouzet.

Els Dietvorst is a Belgian visual artist and filmmaker based in County Wexford. Her work has been shown and supported by organizations such as the Kaaitheatre, Brussels; Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels; M HKA Museum of Modern Art, Antwerp; and BAK, Utrecht as well as internationally in New York, Casablanca, London, and Vienna.  She has been awarded international prizes such as the Evens Arts Prize in 2017, and more recently the Belgian Art Prize. In 2021, as part of the Belgian Art Prize, she hosted two exhibitions concurrently – This is what you came for – in Bozar and CENTRALE for Contemporary Art, both in Brussels.

Catherine Bowe, in her role as curator, has overseen the development of the visual arts programme for Wexford Arts Centre and projects of note include the Living Arts Project, Emergence Visual Art Award, and MAKE/curate Programme.  In terms of her curatorial approach, she is interested in examining how we interact with the natural world, exploring the internal and external factors that influence us as we try to make sense of this relationship. This interest resides in the potential of art to alter our imagination to see new ways of cohabiting.

Karla Sánchez Zepeda is an art historian, curator, and cultural producer. She has participated in numerous educational, research and curatorial projects in Ireland. Her research interests are the environment, art education, the role of art in contemporary society, interdisciplinary collaborative practices, and the construction of the rural.  Karla, who is also a farmer (regenerative agriculture), is the co-founder of Blackbird Cultur-lab, an experimental culture-laboratory that aims to provide a space for agriculture and the arts to meet.

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ADRIFT will run concurrently at Wexford Arts Centre and Wexford County Council from Tuesday 15 October to Friday 29 November 2024.

Wexford Arts Centre’s opening hours are Tuesday – Saturday from 10am-4.30pm.  During the Wexford Festival Opera (18 October – 2 November), the galleries will open Sunday 19, Sunday 27 and Monday 28 October from 11am – 4pm.

Wexford County Council’s opening hours are Monday – Friday from 10am-5pm.  During the Wexford Festival Opera (18 October – 2 November), the Council will open Saturday 19, Sunday 20, Saturday 26, Sunday 27, Monday 28 October, and Sunday 3 November from 11am – 4pm.

ADRIFT is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and Flanders State of the Arts. It is run in association with ROSSINANT, Belgium.For further information on ADRIFT or artist Els Dietvorst contact Catherine Bowe, Curator – Wexford Arts Centre on +353 (0)53 23764 or catherine@wexfordartscentre.ie.

Images: Adrift, 2024, Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre. Photography: Jed Niezgoda.