Beautiful Things without [undue] Comment

Clíodhna Ní Anluain

12 February — 2 April 2022

About the Artist(s)

Clíodhna Ní Anluain is intrigued by built spaces, their narration and presentation, and with archives and memory. This interest further evolved during her MA in Art, Research and Collaboration at IADT which she completed in 2021.

Her practice has emerged through her work as a museum and event curator, and as a theatre and radio producer. It has also been influenced by her work as a scriptwriter, writing commissioner, and book editor. This work rigorously engages her in transforming text into new visual, audio, and reading experiences. She is a published editor with Lilliput Press + New Island.

Her RTÉ SPOKEN STORIES 1: Independence-themed series of commissioned short stories was nominated for three 2021 New York Festivals Radio Awards. Her Spoken Stories 2: Creatures of the Earth series is forthcoming in 2022. She chose her latest theme from the title story of John McGahern’s 2006 published story collection.

Other recent work includes her RTÉ 2019/20 DAVIS NOW Lectures: Making Home radio + podcast series with Dr Ellen Rowley as consultant editor, in association with UCD; her visual art curation of Cruinniú na Cásca 2017. In this, she included artists Aideen Barry, Bassam Al-Sabah, Laura Skehan, Gary Coyle and Janet Mullarney. Her 2016 theme-directed RTÉ series Altering States: 100 Years of the Arts in Ireland critiqued how the arts fared in independent Ireland.

She produced RTÉ Sunday Miscellany from 2006-2019. She is the invited Curator of Laois Leaves 2021 Writing and Music Festival. She is a Graduate of TU Dublin, UCC and NUIG. She is a board member and secretary of Visual Artists Ireland (VAI).

Following graduation in 2021 with an MA in Art Research and Collaboration (ARC) from IADT, The Dock awarded Clíodhna Ní Anluain an artist commission and an invitation to exhibit. In 2021 she contributed to Cohost, a virtual exhibition curated by Astrid Newman at the LAB, Dublin. She is also a graduate of NUI Galway, UCC and TU Dublin (DIT).

Formative experience as a theatre producer and curator influences her art and research practice, her work as a writer and editor with The Lilliput Press + New Island. She is a longstanding arts and culture radio programme maker, currently commissioner and producer of RTÉ’s Book on One and SPOKEN STORIES radio + podcast new story collections.

‘Generating visual media, text and sound I engage with built spaces: their physicality and intangible qualities, their architectural and cultural contexts; their actual and memorized archives; and with what can be missed or made new. Beginnings of making allure. Production and output happen in their own present. Such considerations are integral to my work around early Irish arts television'.

‘Spectrum was RTÉ television’s first arts series, beginning transmission in 1962. No Spectrum programme people saw exists today and its paper archive is incomplete.’

Gallery installation images by David Smith