Brenda Kearney is a Leitrim-based multidisciplinary artist whose current practice centres around domestic practices, ideas of community and collaborative care. Drawing on previous experience as a cook, fishmonger, student of anthropology and ongoing ceramic work, she creates projects which prompt conversation, collaborative curiosity and exchanges of ideas. She also incorporates ethnographic research in her methodology, particularly in the areas of craft, education and cultural heritage.

Brenda is a founding member of Fairland Collective, a socially-engaged art collective based between Ireland, the UK and France; they produce art projects that recognise and encourage creativity in daily life. These projects often use cooking and meals to engage networks of people and communities, offering poetic and lively interruptions to ordinary life. Through art and action, the collective’s work facilitates encounters that imagine and create new common ways of working and living together.

Recent commissions and invited residencies include The Potato Connoisseurs (Jersey Heritage and The Morning Boat, Jersey, 2019), John, Is This Your Cup of Tea (Age & Opportunity Artist in a Care Setting, Dublin, 2018/19), ONE POT (Sefton Council Libraries and Arts Council of England, Liverpool, 2017 - ongoing) and Sponge School, (Culture Connects, Dublin, 2018). She was also a commissioned artist on various Grizedale Arts projects, including A Fair Land (IMMA, 2016) and The Dream Of Kiwanasoto (Japan, 2017 - ongoing). She is currently working on ‘Tea by Post’ (link to project website on main page), a collaborative seed-sharing project encouraging connection and community over distance, and exploring themes of care and biodiversity. She is also in the final stages of editing ‘Bread that smiles at the moon’, an open-source digital publication of recipes and writing encouraging sensory engagement in our domestic spaces, due for early spring 2022.

Contact: Brenda.kearney@gmail.com

For more information see: www.fairlandcollective.com