Deirdre O'Mahony

Our first Rural Social will take place on Tuesday 11 March at 7.30pm. Ground-breaking artist Deirdre O’Mahony will share key works in her practice and how she has sustained a career in the arts for more than thirty years. This will be followed by a screening of The Quickening (36 mins), a sound and moving image artwork commissioned by the Douglas Hyde Gallery and supported by an Arts Council of Ireland Project Award. Deirdre is undertaking a research residency in Leitrim as she develops new work.

This is a free and relaxed event.

The Quickening (2024) responds to urgent issues facing farming, food production and the environment. Developed over three years, this unique work gathers voices which together communicate the reality of farming life and the centrality of soil to human, animal and insect life.

The Quickening emerged from a series of gatherings to talk about the issues faced in food production and farming today. O’Mahony’s Sustainment Experiments feasts generated open and frank discussions between farmers, scientists and politicians which, transcribed, have become a libretto developed by the artist and writer Joanna Walsh. The libretto is voiced by singers and musicians Branwen Kavanagh, Michelle Doyle, Siobhán Kavanagh, Ultan O’ Brien and Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin, each with a distinctive pitch, style and pace.

This aural feast is accompanied by moving imagery captured across rural Ireland, showing varied viewpoints of the land and its many inhabitants affected by the unseasonal droughts, floods, and erosion, brought on by accelerating climate change. As O’Mahony states, “The Quickening represents a polyvocal response to the most urgent questions affecting land and its inhabitants, giving voice to the invisible protagonists that shape our earth’s future and an idea of being-in-common that encompasses all earthly inhabitants.”

Deirdre O’Mahony is a visual artist living in Ireland. For over thirty years, she has investigated the political ecology of rural places through public engagement, exhibitions, writing, and plantings. Her work has been presented in national and international exhibitions and biennales. Recent exhibitions include FARMWORK (2025) at Void Art Centre, Derry and The Quickening (2024) commissioned by The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin. Her work is in public and private collections including the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Arts Council of Ireland.