Barbara Kenneally
'Mining-Light' - glass and photography.
'The natural beauty of the Beara Peninsula in West Cork has had a profound influence on me from a very young age. Exploration of colour, especially that of Nature’s response to man’s intervention by copper mining, forms the kernel of my inspiration. My camera documents this exploration.
Glass has an honest purity and natural allure. Its transparency allows for exploration of both the surface and the subsurface. I use rock fragments gathered from the abandoned copper mines at Allihies to create moulds for the glass.
I want viewers to enjoy entering this other world of geology and mining and in some way I also hope to evoke reflection on those who lived, worked and passed on from this place.'
- Barbara Kenneally
Having spent the first half of her life working as a medical scientist, a few years ago Barbara Kenneally left the science lab to follow her passion of glass and photography. First attending Coláiste Stiofáin Naofa, from there she went on to study Applied Art at the CIT Crawford College of Art and Design.
Last year she was awarded the Eli Lilly Purchase Prize along with an academic year long residency in the Glass Studio at the Crawford College of Art and Design.
Her current collection of work focuses on rocks, as geology and particularly the disused Copper Mines near Alllihies on the Beara Pennisula are core influences on her work.
Kenneally features eleven glass sculptures in total along with prints by emerging artists Aileen Farnan and Norah Porter and some work by Sarah Walker.
Aileen Farnan who is a current student at the CIT Crawford College of Art and Design seeks to capture the beauty and ever changing nature of the sea in her work while Norah Porter, a soon to be student at CCAD explores the evocative nature of colour in her paintings.