Moving Canvas

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No booking necessary, video will be available to watch here from 11 October 2024.

Artists

Noelle Mc Alinden, curator and  founder of Moving Canvas, Chair of NI Mental Health Arts Festival

Victoria Geelan, musician

Sheila Llewellyn, writer

Séamas Mac Annaidh, writer

Julie Murphy, visual artist

Rory O Loughlin, visual artist

Kate O Shea, visual artist

Margaret Stack, artist and art therapist

Full Event Details

Moving Canvas is a unique initiative curated and designed by Noelle McAlinden on behalf of the Northern Ireland Mental Health Arts Festival 2024.

Moving Canvas began as an invitation to seven artists living, working, from or based in the Fermanagh Omagh District Council area of Northern Ireland, to participate in a series of conversations, experiences and opportunities to pause, stop and reflect upon their own creative practice and that of each other’s practices and their own mental health and wellbeing.

From November 2023 to March 2024, seven artists were invited to join a series of virtual conversations before meeting together for the first time at Enniskillen Castle Museum. Among the experiences was a request to explore and respond to the work of renowned Fermanagh based artist Mavis Thomson, Senior Royal Ulster Academician.

This provided all artists with an opportunity to visit her solo show, Coloured Thoughts, a unique exhibition of paintings, poems and assemblages created from found objects, objects gifted to the artist, and inspired by her lived experience and the world events.

The exhibition provided an opportunity for artists to meet and explore the exhibition as a starting point for discussion and reflection on their own practice, without any pressure or demands on them other than to experience an exhibition and the artist’s sources of inspiration.

The artists were deliberately drawn from across a range of diverse artforms; poetry, spoken word, literature, visual and performing arts, and art therapy. Many aspects embodied in the sources of inspiration of Mavis Thomson’s Exhibition.

The participating artists were then provided with a series of opportunities to travel on Fermanagh waterways, initially Erne water Taxi’s Island Discovery around the Island Town of Enniskillen, and then disembark before taking another Ferry across to Castle Island, with Blue Green Yonder, experience nature and the waterways from a unique perspective.

This provided a series of unique opportunities to get to know themselves, each other and the invaluable resources around them, mindful of the investment in their mental health and wellbeing.

The request was to be present to the experiences and potentially see this as a form of stimulus for their future practice. The artists were also provided with a small bursary to invest in their own practice.

“Moving canvas has evolved significantly as a unique concept and initiative curated on behalf of the NI Mental Health Arts Festival connecting artists and artforms who have now become a community and an extended family. This has exceeded all our expectations.”

The mutual encouragement and support and the cross-fertilisation of ideas has stimulated thinking and further explorations of individual and collective artforms, the culmination of which is a  group show celebrating the NI Mental Health Arts Festival  at Strule Arts Centre Omagh which took place from May 9th to May 26th 2024.

Artist Biographies:

Noelle McAlinden, Visual Artist, Creative Advisor, Mental Health Campaigner, Curator and Cultural Broker

Noelle Mc Alinden is a practicing artist exhibiting locally, regionally and internationally, with work in public and private collections across UK, Europe, US and Canada. Noelle also works as a creative adviser, curator, arts educator, a former Head of Art and Design in a post-primary school and Senior Lecturer for Arts at Fermanagh College of Further Education. She teaches across a range of sectors including, primary, post primary, university and the prison Sector, and was an international artist in residence in University of Transylvania, Lexington, Kentucky as part of The Governors School of Art.

As an arts activist for almost 39 years, Noelle has worked across statutory and voluntary Youth and Community sectors. She is passionate about all artforms promoting visual and performing arts, moving image, film and digital literacy. She was Chair of Creative Youth Partnerships and served as Chair of The Forum for Local Government and the Arts. She is an active advocate for the arts supporting the development of artists and creatives promoting collaborative and strategic partnerships locally, regionally and internationally.

Noelle’s work varies in size, scale, subject matter and treatment, from large-scale oil paintings to small mixed media pieces on canvas. The work is vibrant in colour and texture that appeal strongly to the eye with work consisting of an extraordinarily vivid panorama of colour, light and imagery, abstract and semi representational. The work to date has evolved from the figurative/narrative tradition. The choice of subject matter and treatment of it has evolved in a logical development from previous solo exhibitions, Waterways of the mind, Out of the Blue, Eve–olution, Precious Cargo and Emotional Landscape. 

Abstract works are inspired by experiments with colour, texture, light and semi animated marks, traces of life that somehow continue to be figurative. The paintings in oils and acrylics cover surfaces and canvasses that have been distorted, distressed, layered with texture and colour, with fragments that have been constructed and deconstructed exposing colour beneath the surface.

Inspiration is drawn from who the artist is and where she has come from and where she is now, both the physical world the artist lives in and the private world within her that carries the Precious Cargo of the past and all its diverse, dynamic and evolving happenings, the magic of gained knowledge & personal insight. An Artist who has mined deeper with age, where with a love of emotive colour, scorched canvasses emerge, where blue tones and strong exotic tones collide, where inspiration is sought in everything and every experience, and where the artist paints large-scale as well as small, and welcomes the happy accident.

Inspiration from the work of Hodgkin’s and Hoyland have influenced recent work. Noelle says “My work has evolved, it comes from my life, my soul, experiences, memory and imagination. Shaped, nourished by events and accidental happenings, family, friendship and a sense of place.”

 

Northern Ireland Mental Health Arts Festival

NIMHAF is a festival highlighting mental health by showcasing arts events across Northern Ireland. With arts on offer from visual arts and photography, poetry and song to psychodrama, music, comedy and film, the festival promises to put transformation on the agenda across Northern Ireland.

Founded in 2013, the Northern Ireland Mental Health Arts Festival (NIMHAF) was the first of its kind in Northern Ireland.

“These festivals are important as they give the public an opportunity to engage with art specifically referencing mental health. They also give venues and organisations the chance to work with new artists, commission new work and connect with new audiences locally and regionally. Funding will help support the institution to programme talks, workshops and exhibitions. With the aim of bringing a range of high quality and engaging, free events to the public and creating opportunities of paid work for artists and creative practitioners based in or from Northern Ireland.” 

Laura McCafferty – CCA Derry

Organisations Involved / Partner Organisation(s):

Venue Information: