Join artists Juana Robles and Kasia Kaminska for an informal Open Studio afternoon in Butler Gallery’s recently opened Garden Studio.

Juana Robles is the Gypsy Ray Photography Resident Artist for 2024, with mentoring support from photographer Kasia Kaminska. This skills sharing residency is based on developing Plant Based Photography techniques and eco-friendly darkroom practices in our Garden Studio.

At Butler Gallery we are excited about nurturing the development of plant-based photographic practices, as a way to progress and support analogue photographic practice with a sustainable focus. This in keeping with ecological focuses across our Learning and Engagement programme and our new Garden Studio as a space to expand our Learning Programme with a focus on sustainability.

This is a free ticketed event. The Garden Studio has limited capacity, please book a 30 minute time slot to attend.

About:

The Gypsy Ray Photography Residency is an annual residency programme at Butler Gallery which utilises analogue cameras, photography equipment and darkroom set up for the development of new analogue photographic work. The residency is intended to support artists working in analogue photography, to afford them time and facilities to develop their practice.

About Gypsy Ray
A native of Illinois, USA, Gypsy Ray (1949-2020) studied drawing and photography at the University of Iowa later receiving her Masters degree in photography from Goddard College. Most of her U.S.A. based photographic work was created in California where her series based on The Male Nude and her later work with the San Francisco Aids Foundation and San Francisco Hospice received national and international attention. Resident in Ireland since 2000 she continued her documentary practice through creative engagements with local Camphill communities and with Traveller communities in County Kilkenny. Her work is to be found in many public and private collections including Permanent Collections, (U.S. Library of Congress), The Wellcome Trust Gallery (British Museum), Butler Gallery and the David Kronn Collection (Irish Museum of Modern Art).

The Gypsy Ray Photography Residency has been made possible with the support of Mary L. Ray and Steve Berlinski.

Artists Biographies:

Juana Robles (b. Tortosa, Spain 1983) is an experimental filmmaker based in Kilkenny, Ireland. Having grown up in Switzerland she studied Visual Communication, Spatial Design and attended several experimental filmmaking workshops.

Her work is focused on analogue filmmaking and the use of everyday and poetic documentations to capture intimate events, when collaborating mostly with outsiders and artists with unconventional trajectories. She's interested in using the materiality of analogue film together with experimental and process-based methods to dissolve the medium in order to highlight alternative ways of seeing and experiencing.

Since Juana Robles moved to Ireland in 2019 she has produced nine short and one feature length works. They have been screened in numerous experimental film festivals around the world.

https://www.homerunjr.com/

https://www.facebook.com/jota.erre.79656

Kasia Kaminska is an artist and educator living in Co. Kilkenny.

She holds a BA in Photography from TUDublin and an MA in Social Art Practice from TUShannon-Midwest. She is a founding member of award-winning photobook collective Read That Image and her photographic projects and publications have been included in exhibitions (TULCA, RDS Student Art Awards) and book fairs (Limerick International Publishers Salon, Dublin Art Book Fair) throughout Ireland. She has been awarded artist residencies at Cow House Studios in Co. Wexford and Grizedale Arts in the UK.

In 2021 she initiated The GILD Project, a social art and eco-photography project that aims to connect people, plants and places through creativity, collaboration and community engagement. The GILD Project has contributed to the 'Human Lab' at Electric Picnic curated by Aisling Murray (2022), ‘Community Vaults’ at Axis Ballymun curated by Maeve Stone (2021-2022) ‘Seeds of the Future’ at the Kilkenny School of Food (2021) and ‘How do we start?’ (2021), a climate art magazine commissioned by Project Arts Centre and curated by Maeve Stone.

www.kasiakaminska.ie

www.readthatimage.org

www.gildproject.ie