Know Your Rights in Care Project | Galway Arts Festival

In June, five young people from the EPIC Care Community joined members of the EPIC team and Dani, Creative Lead for the Know Your Rights in Care Project, for a day at the Galway Arts Festival. K, one of the young people in attendance, shares his experience in this blog.

We met outside Henry Street Garda Station in Limerick, and we got on the bus to Galway around 10:15 AM. Once we had got off the bus in Galway, we saw some art like a giant duck, some statues, and buskers before heading to the first exhibition.

The first exhibition, “The Burning House” by David Mach, featured a life size 3D model of a house that had exploded and lit on fire. It had real grass and plants on the ground, and painted expanding foam made to look like explosions. Lodged in the expanding foam were household items and everyday objects and appliances like fridges, TVs and couches made to look like they shot out the house.

The next part of this exhibition was animals and people made of wound-up coat hangers and wire. They were twisted around into the shapes of human bodies, heads and body parts, as well as animal parts, and one Paul McCartney’s head. One part had hands and arms stretching out. C, one of the young people, said that he believes it represents physical touch and how some people like space and don’t like to be touched in ways that makes them uncomfortable.

A, another young person, said he believes it’s about personal space and boundaries, and how certain people might be much more sensitive to physical touch than others. I believed it was about boundaries and how some people struggle with having their boundaries disrespected which causes them to push people away or avoid them.

The next exhibition featured many abstract paintings with peach, red and blue tones. They were painted in ways that made some of us think we might have seen images in them, but we couldn’t be quite sure. They also had painting of what appeared to be old advertisements, landscapes and the paint palette used to do the artworks was on display as well.

We visited “Funeral for Ashes” by Conor Moloney and John Conneely which was an interactive exhibit. It was a large box like room with holographic projections of nature and ash trees on the floor, walls and roof. One person could control the projections by standing on the middle of the floor and moving their arms, which is supposed to

help them feel a connection with the nature.

After this we went for pizza, which everyone enjoyed. Once we were done, we went back to look at more exhibitions.

The next two exhibitions were in the University of Galway. “Not Breaking. This Wave Drowns Hate” by Kat Austen was an exhibition that focused on marine economics and global warming. It had a boat with a projector of seaside and beach images, and it also had speakers playing water and aquatic life sounds, also featuring talking about the theme and occasional screaming sounds. They had rocks and miniatures statues on spotlighted pedestals.

The next exhibit was “Tactile Tunes” by Arts Alive and Jane Cassidy. This was my personal favourite, as I’m a musician and it featured interactive music. They had abstract mural paintings with pieces of rock and cardboard attached to them, and each piece of cardboard and rock that you touched would make different music tones and sounds. They also had rocks that would make random cartoon or percussion like sound effects when touched or hit. They had seashells and rocks on a long glass pedestal which also each made different musical notes and chords when touched. My personal favourite part was this big circle, and from it they had two socks filled with cotton attached to pieces of string, and one person would grab one sock and the other person would grab the other. When the two people touch hands, it would make twinkling fairy like sounds. The way you moved your fingers would make different frequencies.

Finally, when we were done with the art, we went to get doughnuts, coffee and hot chocolate. We sat down to eat and listen to a local busker, who I paid to play Creep by Radiohead. After this we went to the local shopping centre before getting the bus back to Limerick. We got back into Limerick around 6:30pm so it was a full day. I personally really enjoyed the trip and I’m quite sure the others did too.