Social Engagement — CHRISTINE PRESCOTT

So Nice Day

Exhibition currently showing at Courthouse Gallery and Studios in Ennistymon, County Clare until November 22nd 2025.

A nature-based collaboration with the Carrowbeg Artist Group: Anna Rose Lowry, Máire Maguire, Trish Kelly, Gerry O’Malley, Una Kearns, Sarah Kelly, Ellen Cafferkey and Elsa Jenny Rochford. The Carrowbeg Artist Group are a group of 8 artists with intellectual disabilities that have been working together from the Custom House Studios in Westport for over 16 years, facilitated by artists: Breda Burns, Caroline Masterson, and Gráinne O’Reilly. My collaboration with the group was funded through an Upstart Award from the Mayo County Council Arts Service.

The original project took place in the Autumn of 2023 through the merging of Eco-Art and Forest Bathing concepts. The work was highly sensory and process-orientated. Through a series of nature immersion workshops designed to stimulate the senses, the Artists were introduced to the possibilites of using materials found in nature. This practice fostered everyone’s sense of connection to nature and place, within the local landscape and with each other. We explored notions of proprioception, transience and sensory awareness together as artists, social care assistants and facilitators. Each week built on from the last, informed by what we had learned together.

In the exhibition you will encounter a whimsical installation of natural objects comprised of: sculptural assemblages of wood and natural pigment; monoprints of native leaves on blackberry-stained paper; photographs on Awagami Kozo paper; and a video work showing the evolution of the project which will contextualise the exhibition within its larger framework.