Local residency gives Athlone artist the best of both worlds

It's clear that creativity flows through the veins of Athlone native, Aoife Doolan, who has recently taken up a residency at Abbey Road Artists' Studios.

Every fibre of her being lends itself to the creative as she discusses her work, encompassing painting, writing and music. Her family and the landscape of her native Athlone have significantly influenced her work, she told the Westmeath Independent recently.

Having spent over a decade living in Bantry, west Cork, Aoife returned to Athlone last year following the death of her father, Paddy Doolan.

Describing it as almost a calling to come home, she said: “It was a bittersweet journey and experience. Grief is a very difficult process and I guess being a creative, and my art and my writing, has given me the opportunity to process those things and to move through them and to move with them.

“It's a coming home in many ways. I'm very lucky to have the spaces to really be able to express all those things.”

Those creative spaces have come in the form of a residency at Abbey Road, which also incorporates time working as a Community Arts Inclusion Worker with Athlone Family Resource Centre, providing her with the opportunity to work as a community-based artist and also the space at the studio to build her own practice as an artist.

An accomplished artist whose work was featured in the 2020 HerStory light show exhibition projected onto Dublin's GPO, Aoife explains that, while in Cork she had taken a break from her own art practice.

“For a time in west Cork, I actually had shelved a lot of my creative work in terms of my painting and I went in to focus more on music. I was basically an active, gigging musician for a few years and then, when Covid hit, I lost my work as a musician because of pub closures and I lost my part-time job as a cook with a local organic café.

“From that, I actually ended up taking on a cheffing position as a kitchen manager for a few years before moving back to Athlone last year,” she explained.

Prior to taking up the residency through Athlone Arts and Tourism, Aoife completed a ten-week novel writing course with Eithne Shortall as part of the John Broderick Centenary Residency.

“I was actually quite invested in novel-writing, which I'm still working on. My journey back into the arts has been very much focused on the pen and a lot more creative writing, so now I find myself focusing more on collaborating the written word with visual art, and poetry,” she said.

“I am working on a current series of pen and ink drawings on the Sile na Gigs of Ireland, so that's an ongoing series that I'm using my residency with Athlone Arts & Tourism to complete. I'm hoping to have that finished by late summer, early autumn, and at that point I hope I can work towards a solo exhibition of that work.”

With the studio located across the road from Abbey Road Graveyard, Aoife finds herself fascinated with the stonework of the headstones.

“I found myself pulling back the ivy and looking at the stonework and trying to make out some of the artwork – the stonework artwork, and the deities and the angels, and the intrinsic design work on those headstones are incredible. So I'd hope to maybe be able to make visual pieces from those headstones. That's something that I've really been thinking about a lot,” she said.

Her native Athlone has been a big influence on her work and she said she believes it is quite significant that she has found herself back here.

Acknowledging her father and his influence in her life, she said his passing last year drew her home to re-root in a landscape that she loves.

“I am so inspired by the landscape of this town, and nature, and its biodiversity and I find it a huge inspiration of my writing and my work. Growing up on a river, that's really significantly influenced the content of my work over the years, particularly my writing. I find it very significant that I find myself back here doing this work with the community as well.

“Having the opportunities to do both is pretty amazing,” she said.

Describing her role as Athlone Family Resource Centre's Community Arts Inclusion Worker as a bridge between her work as a community artist and her own work as an artist, she said she loves that the town's new pedestrian and cycle bridge quite literally bridges her two worlds.

“I love that footbridge. I have my family resource work over in O'Connell Street, and that journey across that footbridge, and through Abbey Road Graveyard and into the studios, is a lovely transition. It's really metaphorical in a sense in that it bridges both my worlds. I feel absolutely privileged to have the opportunity to be an artist in residence with Athlone Arts & Tourism.

“They are an amazing amenity and organisation for Athlone town to have,” said Aoife.

“I really am hopeful that this opportunity is going to ignite my own personal work. I think it's quite symbolic and significant that I found myself back here.”

Being surrounded by her family, Aoife said that her mother, Breegen Hegarty and the wider Hegarty family have also hugely influenced her.

She acknowledged her late uncle, Seán Hegarty, who passed away recently.

“He's left such a love of poetry and nature, his love of poetry, his love of the river Shannon, his love of his community and town... I guess he's just been a huge influence,” she said, adding that it was particularly difficult to lose both him and her father Paddy in the one year.

“They were two significant losses for the whole family,” she said.

A little about Aoife’s artistic background

Aoife is a multidisciplinary, community based artist, musician and painter.

In 2008, she graduated from Dublin Institute of Technology with a BA in Fine Art and further completed an MA in Film Studies and Screen Culture at University College Dublin in 2010. In 2008, she was selected by the Royal Hibernian Academy for their Emerging Artist Graduate exhibition for her work, titled Flightless, which also went on to gain recognition with Filmbase and Underground Cinema in Dublin. She has exhibited work in various locations across Ireland, including Athlone’s Luan Gallery, and her work was selected for inclusion in the 2020 HerStory light show exhibition, projected on the GPO in Dublin city.

Over the past 15 years Aoife has developed both a personal practice as a solo artist, and a practice as a community artist, with a specific focus on community inclusion and regeneration. She has co-founded three community artist collectives over that time including the Making Space collective, Athlone, and the Pulse collective in Bantry, Co. Cork, where she lived and worked as a community artist for over a decade. She has exhibited her work across the country, including Athlone’s Luan Gallery (Boardwalk Gallery) alongside the Louis Le Broqucy exhibition, An Tain.

Aoife is currently working under the Athlone Family Resource Centre as the Community Arts Inclusion worker, with a residency at Abbey Road Studios in collaboration with Athlone Arts and Tourism.