Workshop: Lichenous Languages

Discover the practice of concrete poetry through creating responses to a selection of Irish lichen specimens. Lichens are a trickster species, a hybrid organism of algae and fungi.

This workshop for adults explores experimental ways of using language to respond to lichens. Through hand-manipulation and simple duplication techniques such as stencils and stamps, visual styles that have always implied authority or professionalism can be broken down, expanded and repurposed into highly individualised arrangements of graphic patterns, letters, words and symbols that reflect the uniqueness of botanical life forms. Simple, hand-stitched book form will be covered to bind graphic arrangements together.

Chloe Brenan is an Irish artist from rural County Carlow who divides her time between Carlow and Dublin. Through a combination of moving image, photography, sound, print, installation and text she explores how forces are registered and measured - both experientially and materially - in human and non-human bodies, exploring the possibilities of different and expanded modes of sense making. Works often involve close and careful examinations of the poetic haptics of daily life, processes on the edge of perception that call into question boundaries between bodies, intimate spaces and the wider environment.

This event takes place as part of the Summer School, from Friday 8 to Sunday 10 July, 11am -– 5pm. Click here for more information and events.