TOGETHER
IN COMMUNE
27 JUNE
—13 SEPT
2025
Along the Camac (2025)
She grew the tree plant, she grew the plant, she grew the primeval mother: The plants of lamentation have sprouted, (2023) — Cecilia Bullo. Photo by: Ros Kavanagh and courtesy the artist and RHA Gallery
About the Exhibition
Together in Commune, is the first exhibition of Rua Red’s Studio Programme, curated by Marysia Więckiewicz and featuring work by Rua Red’s current resident studio artists: David Beattie, Ala Buisir, Cecilia Bullo, Pauline Cummins, Lauren Kelly, Maria McKinney, and Fiona Whelan.
This exhibition marks an important moment for Rua Red, highlighting the depth and breadth of the practices nurtured and supported within these walls. Working closely with the curator in the months leading up to the exhibition, each artist presents work that reflects their individual practice, while collectively exploring themes central to socially engaged contemporary art.
“Rua Red’s commitment to community building is at the heart of its curatorial programme, public engagement, and studio residency model. This ethos is reflected in the practices of the studio artists, whose work is connected by a mutual investment in socially engaged, politically situated, and process-led methodologies. Together in Commune brings into focus the processes of research, dialogue, experimentation, and collective exchange that unfold within the studio. It highlights the studio as a place for making work, for building connections, sharing ideas, and supporting each other’s practice.” — Marysia Więckiewicz
In Rua Red’s Studio Programme, studios are awarded to artists through panel selection for a period of one to three years, This is a core pillar of the organisation’s mission to support artists at every stage of their career. The studios at Rua Red provide artists with time, space, and a supportive community that encourages sustained and critical artistic practice. In turn, the presence of these artists in the building fundamentally shapes Rua Red as a centre for enquiry and experimentation. Their work contributes to a vibrant and evolving ecology of ideas that extends beyond the studio walls, enriching both the organisation and the wider cultural landscape of South Dublin County and beyond.
David Beattie is an artist and lecturer in Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology. Beattie’s artistic practice explores the material world through experiential, physical engagements with objects and non-objects. Recent projects have focused on
the social and environmental impact of digital technologies, agroecology, psychoacoustics and the communal listening experience. He was awarded the Harpo Foundation Award in 2010 and was a recipient of the Hennessy Art Fund for IMMA collection, 2016.
In recent years, he has been commissioned to produce a number of temporary and permanent public artworks including VOID Commissions, Derry (2021), Reflectors, Bray, Co.Wicklow and Patterns of Illumination, Griffith Barracks Multi-denominational School, Dublin. Exhibitions include The Glucksman (2019), Berlin Opticians (2018+2019) TULCA Art Festival, Galway (2017), CCA Derry-Londonderry (2017), Irish Museum of Modern Art (2017+2013), Rubicon Projects, Brussels (2013) All Humans Do, The Model Sligo and Whitebox, New York (2012), The Mattress Factory Art Museum, Pittsburgh (2010), Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2010). Recent work includes Future Light from Distant Stars, the focal point of which is a large greenhouse which is utilised as a growing environment, a meeting place, and a workshop space.
Ala Buisir is an award-winning visual artist and journalist. Born in Ireland with Libyan roots, Ala holds a BA in Photography from TU Dublin and MA in Journalism from DCU. She is currently undertaking a PhD by practice at the University of Limerick, in which she investigates the ‘othering’ of Muslim women in the Western world by societal Islamaphobia and Western tropes of Islam. In doing so, she aims to use this research to inform participatory arts-based interventions that challenge Islamaphobia against Muslim women by amplifying Muslim women’s voices and creating avenues for digital storytelling in which these voices are agents in their narrative. Ala’s work documents the social and political tension around us today. The aim is to raise awareness by presenting events through different perspectives in hopes that it may also bring about change.
She is also the co-founder of Gorm Media. An impact-focused digital media start-up with a mission of unifying across differences and advancing belonging for marginalised communities. And a board member of the Amal Women’s Association. A Muslim women-led organisation. It provides front-line services to Muslim women connected to the Muslim community nationwide.
Cecilia Bullo is an Irish/Italian visual artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans sculpture, installation, sound, and performance. Classically trained and grounded in research, her work draws from ecofeminist theory, mythology, psychoanalysis, and ritual to examine healing, transformation, and the politics of care. Through cross-cultural references — ranging from Greco-Roman votive traditions to Irish folklore — Bullo explores ecological memory, collective trauma, and the symbolic power of material through apotropaic forms, botanical magic, and embodied gestures.
Recent solo exhibitions include Being Haunted by the Breezes, Now How Will You Exist? (Royal Hibernian Academy, 2023); LEIGHEAS–LIMINALIS (The Dock, 2023). Selected recent projects and group exhibitions include Connections: OPW State Art Collection Cross Border Exhibition Farmleigh Gallery, Dublin / Luan Gallery, Athlone / Down Arts Centre, Downpatrick / Braid, Ballymena (2025, EI); Repository Apparatus for Magical Thinking (2024, Dublin); WARP Artist Village (2024, Eindhoven, NL); Material Stories (2022, Vienna); Biomedia (2020, Querétaro, MX); and Transgender, Gender & Psychoanalysis (2017, Freud Museum, London). Awarded residencies include Fire Station Artists’ Studios, the Red Stables and she has recently completed a three-month residency at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris (2025).
Pauline Cummins is an artist whose work explores the human condition from a feminist perspective. Her interest lies in socio-cultural relations, where she examines identity, gender and socio-cultural relations connected to different communities in society. Her examination of locations questions how the self is constituted and how people act within a group either chosen or determined in social situations such as work, education, leisure time “social activities” or the basic structure of the family.
She was the first visual artist to work with prisoners in Mountjoy’s Women’s Prison in a scheme initiated by the Dept. Of Justice and the Irish Arts Council in 1986. She has had video installations commissioned for the Neo-natal unit, National Maternity Hospital, Dublin and with Firestation Artists’ Studios and the community of the North Inner City, Dublin. This work was shown in Our Lady of Lourdes church, where her video installations were shown in Confession Boxes. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.
Lauren Kelly is an award-winning visual artist from Dublin, Ireland, primarily working in performance art. She is the founder of the Performing Activism Collective and works both solo and in socially engaged projects. Lauren approaches her practice as a mode of activism, using the vast landscape of performance art to articulate politics rationally, addressing the oppressed states of the body.
Currently undertaking an MA in Art and Social Action at the National College of Art and Design. Research provides the roots for her work, offering historical, personal, and political depth. It involves connecting with other researchers, archivists, and activists.
Maria McKinney’s multidisciplinary practice includes sculpture, installation, photography, and video, and often involves direct collaboration with scientific communities and farmers.
Her practice frequently integrates traditional craft techniques with contemporary materials, creating works that critically examine the social, historical, and scientific frameworks through which humans have shaped and manipulated the natural world — particularly in the context of agriculture.
McKinney’s solo exhibitions include the Wellcome Collection, London; the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin; Lokaal 01, Antwerp; La Permanence, Clermont-Ferrand; The MAC, Belfast; The LAB, Dublin; and the Context Gallery, Derry. Her work has featured in group exhibitions at institutions such as the Gregg Museum, North Carolina; Sunderland Museum, UK; Bozar, Brussels; and Pace University Gallery, New York. Her artworks are held in several public collections, including the Arts Council of Ireland, the Museum of English Rural Life, Europol, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the Office of Public Works, and Bank of Ireland. McKinney has participated in numerous residencies, including Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture (USA), Temple Bar Gallery + Studios (Dublin), Parity Studios at University College Dublin, Fire Station Artists’ Studios (Dublin), Banff Centre (Canada), and The Red Stables (Dublin)..
Fiona Whelan (she/her) is an artist, writer and Programme Leader of the MA/MFA Art and Social Action at NCAD. Her arts practice is committed to exploring and responding to systemic inequalities through long-term collaborations with diverse individuals, groups and organisations. These processes are rooted in complex relational networks and typically accumulate over time through a series of public manifestations, including text-based, visual, performative and dialogical artworks, that take direction from the collaborative process and lived experiences of those involved. Common to all work is an interrogation of multiple power relations, such as those between police and young people; state-run medical services and patients; national housing policy and those experiencing housing injustice; as well as less tangible power relations experienced as social norms related to class and gender.
Notable works include Boys in the Making (2025, with Rialto Youth Project/RYP and others, NCAD Gallery); The forest that won’t forget (2024, with John Conway, 221+ and Hometree), The Apology (2022, with Feidlim Cannon and Housing Action Now), What Does He Need? (2020/2022 with Brokentalkers and RYP, The LAB/IMMA) and Policing Dialogues (2011, with RYP, The LAB). Fiona is also a committed writer of books, book chapters and journal articles focused on the complex relationality, labour, methodology and ethical challenges of collaborative arts practice.
Marysia Więckiewicz (she/her) is a curator and art writer, with nearly fifteen years of experience, both in public and private sectors. She has organised numerous exhibitions and projects in Ireland and abroad, independently and in partnership with various institutions and local authorities, including Hugh Lane Gallery, The Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), Temple Bar Gallery + Studios and Wexford Arts Centre. She worked as Assistant Curator in Hugh Lane Gallery and IMMA. Marysia was the founding director and curator of Berlin Opticians Gallery – a contemporary art gallery that showcased artistic practices both online and in unconventional spaces. She co-edited Paper Visual Art Journal (PVA) between 2014-2018. Marysia has received awards from the Arts Council of Ireland and Culture Ireland. She has recently been appointed Curator of Visual Arts at Project Arts Centre.
Ala Buisir
David Beattie
Fiona Whelan
Lauren Kelly
Maria McKinney
Marysia Więckiewicz—Curator
Pauline Cummins
Curator Tour with Marysia Więckiewicz
Saturday 19 July, 2 — 3pm
- Join curator Marysia Więckiewicz for a walk-around gallery tour of Together in Commune as she explores the processes of research, dialogue, experimentation, and collective exchange that unfold within the artists’ studio.
Against the Oppressor: Performance by Lauren Kelly
Friday 27 June, 6pm, 40mins
- Against the Oppressor is a live performance by Lauren Kelly as part of her gallery installation that highlights the current political conflict in Ireland. The flag that represents all backgrounds shows us the path to peace. Kelly calls on people to remember the original meaning and history of the Irish flag.
In a climate of blame toward the individual victims of an unjust system Kelly advocates for a middle ground where we can coexist peacefully and instead direct our focus towards the source of the power that oppresses us all. Ireland is now a home to many, but once the Irish had to emigrate. Refugees in Ireland are falling victim to anger that should be directed at the government.
Whose flag? Our flag.
Invitation to Intervene: Artist-Led Conversations With Pauline Cummins
- A series of gallery based one-to-one discussions between Cummins and invited guests exploring what it is to live and work in the Irish arts landscape today.
Urban Talismans: Collective Rituals of Making Drop-in Workshops with Cecilia Bullo
Saturday 5 July and 6 September
- The artist will be at work from 2 — 5pm. All are welcome to drop-by and join in; most suitable for adults and young people (13+)
This workshop explores the creation of sculptural talismans and garlands as gestures of protection, healing, and connection. Rooted in ecofeminist ideas, cross-cultural folklore, and ritual practices, participants are invited to work with natural materials such clay, fibre, botanical elements, and found objects to develop tactile forms that hold personal or collective meaning.
Participants will be encouraged to consider what rituals or protective gestures feel relevant to them within contemporary urban life, migration histories, or ancestral memory. The resulting works (written intentions, small symbolic objects/sculptures) will be activated throughout the exhibition and could become part of a time-durational installation as part of the artist’s exhibited work.
An ‘In Conversation’ event with artists Fiona Whelan and Ciaran Smyth
Friday 5 September, 11am — 1pm
- In this ‘In Conversation’ event, artist Dr. Fiona Whelan will reflect on the content and process of making The River – a large-scale visual mapping of the processual features of her arts practice which engages with systemic power relations and inequalities through long-term collaborations. Fiona will be in conversation with artist and researcher Dr Ciaran Smyth who supported her in a process of recursive mapping, as the pair explored new cartographic strategies for visualising this collaborative and socially engaged practice. The conversation will be moderated by Carolann Courtney (Create).
Contribute to Teagasc Research with Maria McKinney
1 — 8 August
- As part of Cattle and Capital, McKinney invites visitors to take part in a short survey in response to her gallery installation. Visitor feedback will contribute to ongoing research by Teagasc, helping us explore the connections between art, agriculture, and society. Share your perspective and be part of the conversation.
Along the Camac
- Over the duration of the exhibition, Along the Camac will share some of the conversations and activities of an ongoing engagement with Clondalkin Global Garden. A series of workshops to include making bioplastic from milk, creating natural dyes for fabric and producing cheese from surplus milk, will be held in the gallery as a way of thinking about stewardship and collective care for land.
Part of the Fabric: A Half-Day Workshop with Ala Buisir
Saturday 12 July, 26 July, 9 August, and 23 August, 1 — 4pm
- Part of the Fabric invites migrant and/or second-generation communities to take part in a half-day workshop exploring collective and archival ancestry through a guided sublimation printing process. Images of family heritage and cultural motifs will be embedded into the fabric of the Irish flag, reclaiming space, resisting exclusion, and redefining belonging. It’s a declaration: we are here, and we are part of the peace the flag promises.
Participants are asked to bring materials to create individual ancestral maps: this can include photographs of family members and ancestors, documents, objects, or anything that may represent your culture. We will use a copy machine and printer to ensure that original photographs are not damaged; digital images/documents are welcome; there will also be online resources available for ancestry research and image finding.
The flags will be taken home by each participant; those willing will also have their finished pieces documented for the ongoing project.
Part of the Fabric challenges who gets to claim Irish identity by reimagining the national flag as a shared symbol, not a gatekeeping tool. It highlights the presence, histories, and contributions of migrants in Ireland, showing that their stories are not separate from the national narrative — they are woven into it.
Visualising your Practice as Process and Method: A Two-Hour Workshop for Artists with Fiona Whelan
Friday 18 July and 22 August, 10am — 12pm
- Artists are invited to engage in a reflective two-hour workshop to explore the methodological and processual features of their practice as an artist. Facilitated by Fiona Whelan, each workshop will begin with participants being introduced to The River, a large scale drawing that visualises the continuous processual features of her collaborative arts practice. Each artist will then be invited to engage in a visualisation of their own practice, leading to a focused critical dialogue that considers the labour and processes, both visible and invisible, that underpin artistic practice.
‘Cattle and Capital’ (2019) — Maria McKinney, live sculptural performance, RJA&HS Cattle Competition
Ireland’s China, Ireland’s Taiwan (2025) — Lauren Kelly, photo courtesy of the artist.
Part of the Fabric (2025) — Ala Buisir, photo courtesy of the artist.
Tracings (2023) — Pauline Cummins, photo courtesy of the artist.
Exhibition
Credits
- Special thanks to curator Marysia Więckiewicz for her work in realising this exhibition and her insightful text to accompany this publication. Thanks to each of the resident studio artists: David Beattie, Ala Buisir, Cecilia Bullo, Pauline Cummins, Lauren Kelly, Maria McKinney, and Fiona Whelan.
- Rua Red is very grateful to funders; South Dublin County Council Arts Office, the Arts Council, and Creative Ireland, for the ongoing support that makes all of this possible. Along the Camac is supported by the Creative Ireland Programme South Dublin. The River, by Fiona Whelan was developed with the support of an Individual Artist Bursary Award from South Dublin County Council, and Rua Red.
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