Courtyard Project Spaces A & B

Iwan Gwyn Parry

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A series of crafted fine art by north Wales artists
Series curation: Jonathan Le Vay

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Reflections on the residency at Cill Rialaig, Co. Kerry

The experience of the Residency is still raw and surreal for me even after a month of returning home if I’m honest, and raw isn’t too strong a term to describe the experience. A great deal of the experience doesn’t make sense to me and to me still as time baffles the memory and creates its own understanding of things.

I was alone with very little or no means of communicating with the outside world.

“Raw” in the sense of attempting to naturally contextualise the experience, what it meant being out literally on a limb, as far West as one can arrive at. One literally cuts one’s own path to arrive there, so to speak! One was surrounded by sea, sky and the crooked roads of the famine.

Hooded crows were ever present as a local source of curiosity, but beyond that, there was very little sign of civilization.
There was only the horizon and the distant islands.

It was soulful and daunting to be enveloped in its grandeur. Nothing can prepare one for the time and space being so removed provides.

It’s become a place of deep contemplation, personal reflection and solace. It was profoundly moving for me.
Never have I felt such isolation.

It was a beautiful space to arrive at and co-exist with its silence, its epic atmosphere and limitless seduction of the senses.

The landscape was bathed in light at the moment of arrival and a dark, misty gloom when I departed…

Works available to purchase.