Studio Event with Ruth E Lyons Murrevagh, Mulranny, Co. Mayo 2–4pm, Saturday 10 May 2025
A special Studio Event with Ruth E Lyons took place at the artist’s studio in Mulranny, County Mayo, Ireland, on Saturday 10 May 2025.
As part of this event visitors were invited to attend a preview screening of Lyons’ major new film work The Sea Inside Us. The film, by Ruth E Lyons and Colm Hogan, chronicles the human relationship to the sea through salt. In tracing the seam of an ancient ocean, Lyons thinks through aeons and minerals, formulating questions that fathom the unknowable while reaching for the eternal. During the Studio Event the artist spoke about the development of ideas behind the work, inviting visitors to experience a taste of her studio practice on-site, encounter a series of saltrock sculptures in progress, and listen to a live performance created specially for the work.
Ruth E Lyons is an independent artist based in Clew Bay, Co. Mayo. She works primarily in sculpture creating gallery and public works concerned with landscape. She recently realised two major public artworks, Wave Junction, 2023, Quantum Park, Dublin and SUPERUNIFICATION, 2022, Honeypark, Dublin. Lyons’ work has been exhibited internationally and is included in the collections of the OPW, National Gallery of Ireland and Arts Council of Ireland. Since 2014 Lyons has been working on an expansive project with EUSalt and the saltmines of Europe creating carvings from the ancient Zechstein Sea. Recent exhibitions include: New Perspectives, National Gallery of Ireland, 2021, Shaping Ireland, National Gallery of Ireland, 2019, Borderlines, Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh and The Edge @ Bath Uni, 2019, The Necessity of Art, Grazer Kunstverein Summer Programme, Austria, 2017, Forecast of the Next Century, 2016, Broad Art Museum, Michigan, Riddle of the Burial Grounds, 2016, Extra City, Antwerp and Follies of Youth, Hepworth Wakefield Gallery, Yorkshire, 2015.
Special thanks to the artist's family, performers Doimnic Mac Giolla Bhríde, Aodhán Gavigan and Daniel Bodwell, and event tech support team Shane Malone-Murphy and Barry Lynch. Video by Infocus Media, filmed on location at the artist's studio in Mulranny, Co Mayo on 10 May 2025. Design by Alex Synge/The First 47.
This performative preview is produced by Kunstverein Aughrim and supported by the Arts Council. Kunstverein Aughrim’s ongoing collaboration with Ruth E Lyons is supported by The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon and by Wicklow County Arts Office through the annual Strategic Project Award Scheme.