Farm Walks

The Dock is delighted to announce a series of Farm Walks projects in partnership with Leitrim County Council, Leitrim Sustainable Agricultural Group, and Ulster Wildlife. Following action-research residencies, artists and farmers have prepared joint proposals to work over an extended period to develop projects of shared interest.

Mohill farmer Gerry Bohan and artist Steph Saidha share a fascination for speculation, storytelling, and the imaginative potential of the rural landscape. Through humour and curiosity, they have brought together folklore, ecology, and fiction to create new narratives that invite reflection on our relationship with land, animals, traditions, and cures.

Ecologist/farmer Dolores Byrne and artist Grace Weir reimagine the Quadrat, as a two cubic metre of farmland, a small volume alive with interconnections. Their proposed sculptural book, both form and record, becomes a dynamic conversation between observation and recollection, tracing how every element from mineral to flower reveals a complex interplay of deep time and transience.

Artist Helen Sharp and farmer Barry Connolly are producing a short film that reflects on succession in both the context of rural Ireland and of the feral mind, blending lived experience with broader cultural, ecological, and social perspectives. The film captures the farm’s actual landscapes and rhythms, weaving in themes of inheritance and belonging.

Artist Anna McGurn and Farmers Jane and Roger Corrigan share a passion and concern for the cultural history of rural areas, which they view as equally endangered and precarious as farm incomes or biodiversity. The starting point for their project centres on collecting stories particular to their farm and to underpin their relevance to contemporary land use.

Sheep farmer Valerie Irwin and artist Christine Mackey are working through ongoing, processual engagement with wool as material artefact, challenging the current status of wool as a surplus or waste material, and instead repositioning it as a site of possibility and transformation. The work is guided by an active working group of crafters and artists who are investigating wool’s structural, ecological, and cultural capacities.