Art Leads

Knowledge Exchange

Art Leads Art Leads ditches algorithmic pressures in favour of a relaxed and conversational pace. Through making, memory, myth, movement, and stories, artists imagine new futures; as catalysts for change, they can hold knowledge, support activism, and host acts of imagination. In a world that turns towards homogeneity, making art is to work freely and to lead others to play, dream, and think.  Series I looks at the energy, innovation, and care brought to places and people through contemporary art, curatorial approaches, and cultural programming.  The  Series I meets artists in their studios, and focuses on influences, travels, materials and connections that are the formational stories of painters and makers. Series 1 was commissioned by Roscommon County Council and Creative Roscommon, curated and produced by Sarah Searson; Recorded live at King House Boyle. The interviews focused on hospitality, care, exchange, and environmental issues. Series 1 Features (Spring 2024)Jennie Moran Kate Strain Cathy Fitzgerald   Series II Features (Summer 2026) Fionna Murray  Sarah O'Brien  Anna Macleod 

Episodes

  1. 9 Sept

    Fionna Murray, Parks, Paint and Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up

    This episode was recorded at The Black Box Theatre and Studios in Galway. Home to Artspace and The Galway Arts Festival. In this conversation, Sarah and Fionna Murray unfold her practice back through five decades from post-punk Manchester to Chelsea and Belfast. They speak about early chapters of Murray's biography, which is her largely undocumented work in music promotion. Murray co-ran an independent club that gave Echo & the Bunnymen an early Manchester gig before losing the venue due to licensing laws. Returning to London, Murray co-founded a club in a King's Cross pub that hosted The Pogues' first performances. However, ultimately this work redirected her toward painting via evening classes at St Martin's. Fionna’s Artspace Studio is overlooking the Corrib, its window framing the university's spire and the slow churn of river traffic. Fionna Murray is quietly assembling one of the more psychologically dense bodies of work to emerge in Irish painting. Her practice is built on distillation and stillness and its close confessional scale. Murray's current painting cycle has its origins in Michelangelo Antonioni's 1966 film Blow-Up, a work she first encountered on television in 1980s London. The film's central setting, a park whose manicured wildness stands in for a kind of constructed rurality within the city.  This, for Murray, became a proxy for something more autobiographical: the negotiated inheritance of being raised in London by parents from Donegal and Mayo. The urban furniture of municipal parks; railings, oval beds, and park flowers became motifs recurring across the new paintings. They are drawn as much from Antonioni's mise-en-scène as from the artist's own material archaeology.  Murray uses twisted paper handles salvaged from shopping bags, cellophane flower wrappers, and tissue paper to assemble her own park-like installations first shown at Galway's 126 Gallery and later at Limerick City Gallery, in an exhibition curated by Sarah Searson. Curiously, the Limerick gallery itself is set within a Victorian public park whose iron railings supplied an uncanny echo of her imagery. Following her degree at Chelsea College of Art in London, Murray undertook an MFA in Belfast, a change from the more austere, abstraction ethos of her London training, a move which re-opened the door to figuration in her practice. Fellow students and friends from that Belfast cohort include the painter Brian Fay and the late Des Ward, who introduced Murray to the poetry of Patrick Kavanagh, which remains a touchstone. A subsequent group exhibition at Dublin's Rubicon Gallery led Murray toward Galway, where she built a long teaching career at ATU, alongside a studio practice sustained through Artspace Studios. Literary and art-historical reference points anchor the new paintings' sense of theatrical stillness. For example, Ludwig Bemelmans's Madeleine books, with their flourished cursive script, neatly lined characters and loose, whimsical ink work and strict discipline of structure, point to the spirit of curiosity in Murray's work.  Maeve Brennan's novella The Visitor lent one painting its title, The Neat Black Flowerbeds; and a 1547–1619 miniature by Nicholas Hilliard, Young Man Among Roses, a striking romantic young swain, a bramble-bound, oval-framed figure resonates with Murray's own compositional logic of enclosure and wildness. Hiroshi Sugito is also cited as a touchstone for the pared-back, theatrical spareness of Murray's sensibility. She cites Piero della Francesca's Baptism of Christ in London's National Gallery as a formative work of reference.  Since retiring from full-time teaching in 2024, Murray has entered what she describes as a newly unbroken period of studio focus, one in which the fractured motifs of childhood, migration, and constructed landscape are being worked, patiently, into paint. Fionna Murray's Portrait is courtesy of Joanne O’Brien Links:  Fionna Murray's Website Fionna Murray Instagram  Artspace Studios  126 Gallery Limerick City Gallery of Art

    Fionna Murray, Parks, Paint and Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up

  2. 05/10/2025

    Sarah O' Brien: Painting, Time and the Studio.

    Episode 1, Series II  “The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is – it’s to imagine what is possible."                                                                                                                          bell hooks  Artist Sarah O' Brien's rural studio is in Kinsale, Co Cork, nor far from where she lives and works. The studio is as much a part of her art as the work itself. Located in an idyllic setting, her workspace offers an elemental connection to the creative process. O'Brien describes it as a sanctuary from a busy life at her families OHK Cafe Kinsale.  Motherhood  has also served as a significant turning point, reshaping her identity and connecting her more deeply with her practice. She openly discusses the transformation in her approach, embracing the vulnerability of bringing works from the secluded studio to public view. To learn more about Sarah O'Brien and her work, visit her website or follow her on Instagram. Listen to discover and engage with the dynamism of her creations, a testament to the indefinable and infinite possibilities inherent in the artistic journey. Sarah O'Brien is interviewed by Sarah Searson, Curator. The podcast was recorded in Monkstown Co Dublin and was produced recorded and edited by Sarah Searson.  Links:  Series Webpage  Artists as Cultural Leaders Instagram  Sarah O'Briens Website Sarah O'Briens Instagram

    Sarah O' Brien: Painting, Time and the Studio.

  3. 07/04/2024

    Cathy Fitzgerald: A personal journey to Haumea Ecoversity and ecosocial values

    Dr Cathy Fitzgerald is an ecological artist, creative entrepreneurial educator, and researcher with  a long interest in the potential of ecoliterate creative people in catalysing community and conversations for a more equitable, sustainable, and peaceful world. She co-developed Haumea Ecoversity, an independent online platform that has supported upskilling over 300+ mid-career creative and cultural professionals in ecoliteracy and values-based learning. Cathy is centred on the potential of the creative sectors role in promoting a significant cultural shift, to inspire communities to think and act for a better world. She is interested in sustainable livelihoods that align with ecosocial values and shares knowledge with those who  learn with her. To explore Cathy's work, visit hollywoodforest.com and HaumeaEcoversity.ie

    Cathy Fitzgerald: A personal journey to Haumea Ecoversity and ecosocial values

  4. 07/04/2024

    Kate Strain: Kunstverein Aughrim and collaborations with artists and communities.

    Kate Strain is a curator of visual arts and founder of Kunstverein Aughrim, a curatorial production office established in 2022. Kunstverein Aughrim is located on the ground floor of a town house in Aughrim, County Wicklow, Ireland, and is part of a franchise established by Kunstverein Amsterdam, with sisters in Milan, New York, and Toronto. Kunstverein Aughrim collaborates closely with artists and communities to support the production of new artwork, bringing audiences as close to the creative process as possible. Kunstverein Aughrim is supported by the Arts Council and Wicklow County Council. www.kunstverein.ie Artists as Cultural Leaders is supported by Culture Ireland and developed by Roscommon Arts Service it takes place in February 2024. Artists as Cultural Leaders is a series of presentations, and discussions by contemporary practitioners who share visual arts skills & strategies in the evolving landscape of visual and artistic leadership.

    Kate Strain: Kunstverein Aughrim and collaborations with artists and communities.

  5. 06/04/2024

    Jennie Moran, Hospitality and Cultural Practice

    Listen back! How a creative practice creates moments of connection. The wonderful Jennie Moran  @hiluncheonette speaks freely and generously about her work as a cultural producer, her wonderful career in creating hospitality, exchange, and her work with organisations, and students. Jennie talks about her work in creating unconditional welcomes. She speaks about studies in gastronomy, the theory, system and philosophy of hospitality. Artists as Cultural Leaders is supported by Culture Ireland and developed by Roscommon Arts Service. In conversation with Sarah Searson, artist Jennie Moran speaks about philosophy, culture, and the infrastructure of hospitality to create opportunities for shared connection. Artists Biography: Jennie Moran  Jennie started a nomadic hospitality project called Luncheonette in 2013 which operated as the canteen in the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, and was named Irish Café of the year at the 2019 Food and Wine Awards. In 2022 Luncheonette was invited to Artsadmin in London, to take part in a hospitality-themed research residency and consultancy project called Say Yes to Who or What Turns Up, using an old café as a site of unconditional welcome. She has completed a Masters in Gastronomy and Food Studies at TUD and is publishing a book entitled How to Soften Corners about the impact of hospitality in institutions. She provides mentorship in holistic hospitality to creative organisations and lectures at NCAD, and occasionally UCD School of Architecture, Cork Centre for Architectural Education (UCC) and TUD. www.jenniemoran.com

    Jennie Moran, Hospitality and Cultural Practice
  • 5 Episodes

About

Art Leads Art Leads ditches algorithmic pressures in favour of a relaxed and conversational pace. Through making, memory, myth, movement, and stories, artists imagine new futures; as catalysts for change, they can hold knowledge, support activism, and host acts of imagination. In a world that turns towards homogeneity, making art is to work freely and to lead others to play, dream, and think.  Series I looks at the energy, innovation, and care brought to places and people through contemporary art, curatorial approaches, and cultural programming.  The  Series I meets artists in their studios, and focuses on influences, travels, materials and connections that are the formational stories of painters and makers. Series 1 was commissioned by Roscommon County Council and Creative Roscommon, curated and produced by Sarah Searson; Recorded live at King House Boyle. The interviews focused on hospitality, care, exchange, and environmental issues. Series 1 Features (Spring 2024)Jennie Moran Kate Strain Cathy Fitzgerald   Series II Features (Summer 2026) Fionna Murray  Sarah O'Brien  Anna Macleod 

Information

  • Creator
    Knowledge Exchange
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    5
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Art Leads
  • Show Website
    Art Leads