Women’s Art Activism: Reflections on WAAG with Dr Alessia Cargnelli

This panel discussion is facilitated by visual artist and researcher Dr Alessia Cargnelli with Irish artists Pauline Cummins, Marie Hanlon, Patricia McKenna and Cecily Brennan.

Taking materials from the Women Artists Action Group (WAAG)’s archive as a cue, the talk will focus on the personal experience of Irish women artists working in the context of 1980s-1990s’ island of Ireland and beyond, looking at their collaborative practice and self-advocacy as a strategy to counteract an hostile art environment that was actively excluding women and other minoritised subjects. The participating artists will share insight of their experimental artistic practice in the early years of their careers, as well as reflecting on the legacy of groups such as WAAG and the importance of international solidarity and collaboration amongst peers.

This event is in tandem with Mermaid Arts Centre's exhibition, WAAG - an archive, which runs until Saturday 28 February

Biographies

Dr Alessia Cargnelli (she/her, b. 1990 in Trieste, Italy) is a visual artist and researcher based in Belfast and currently a Research Ireland post-doctoral fellow at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) and the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA). Alessia moved to Belfast in 2016 to work as co-director of Catalyst Arts (2016-2018). She holds a PhD at the Belfast School of Art focused on Irish feminist-led women-artists’ advocacy groups, and she was post-doctoral researcher at the National Irish Visual Arts Library (NIVAL).
Alessia is co-founder of Soft Fiction Projects and a member of Array Collective.

Pauline Cummins' performance and video work examines the human condition from a feminist perspective. Research driven themes of the political body, activism, human rights and gender are often explored in the artist’s practice. Cummins likes to collaborate with artists and communities in public sites and situations; including within prisons as a visiting artist and was the founding chairperson of the Women Artists Action Group, (WAAG). Cummins lectured at the National College of Art and Design from 1994 – 2014. Cummins was recently an Artist in Residence at The Irish Museum of Modern Art from 2021 – 2022 and is currently based in Rua Red Studios in South County Dublin. Her work is in both national and international collections including The Irish Museum of Modern Art and the National Maternity Hospital. Commissions include the Newgrange Interpretive Centre, New St. Park (Dublin) and the National Maternity Hospital. The long running project Walking in the Way: Performing Masculinity made in collaboration with Frances Mezzetti has been performed internationally in London, Derry, Istanbul, Dublin, Madrid, Seville and Malaga.

Patricia McKenna works in multi-media and installation. Her work includes the installations The Grey House (1993-1994) and Soil (1996) which were part of the series Marking the Land. She has exhibited in Ireland, USA, England and Europe and is the recipient of Awards from the Arts Council and local authority Bursaries. Recent works include Memory of a Forest, Time Space Existence (Venice 2023), and she has participated in Residencies including the Artists Work Programme at IMMA (1997), Art Boundaries Unlimited, Tallahassee, Florida USA (2004), The Rockefeller Foundation Residence Award, Bellagio, Italy (2002). Her work is included in several publications including two volumes of Art and Architecture of Ireland, Sculpture, Twentieth Century by the Royal Irish Academy (2015), Sculpture Magazine (USA) and Visual Politics of Psychoanalysis: Art in Post — Traumatic Culture, Griselda Pollock 2013.

Marie Hanlon is an Irish artist working in sculpture, installation, video and drawing. She holds an MA in Art in the Contemporary World from The School of Visual Culture, NCAD, Dublin, and a BA in English and Art History from University College Dublin. An elected member of Aosdána, in recent years she has produced several collaborative projects with Irish composers, notably with Rhona Clarke. Their work Last Act (The MAC, Belfast, 2025) features the voices of State Choir LATVIJA with their conductor Māris Sirmais.

Cecily Brennan (b.1955) graduated from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin and has shown extensively nationally and internationally. Her work is held in all of the major Irish public and in private collections. Her practice encompasses film, photography, drawing, printmaking, painting (in egg tempera, oil and watercolour) casting, and sound. She is a member of Aosdána and is currently Chair of its organising committee, the Toscaireacht. She helped establish the Visual Arts Centre, a shared studio space, and served on various Boards and committees associated with the arts in Ireland. She was a founder of the Artists’ Campaign to Repeal the Eighth Amendment, which was part of the successful campaign to guarantee reproductive rights to Irish women.