Kim Crowley has completely overhauled the TRISKEL SAMPLE Project Space to bring you Office of Work, a curated space where you can meet your Case Officer for an in-depth discussion on work, the labour that goes into it, and how we manage to continue creating in the face of uncertainty. Elysia from our Box Office & Marketing Team sat down with Kim for a chat about Office of Work, her exhibition that begins on Thurs 16 April, and her workshop, How to “Excel” at the Office of Work, coming on Sat 18 April.

Three words to describe your art.

Collaborative, responsive, and… This is very unlike anything I normally do in my practice, I don’t normally have a studio-based practice at all, so I would say publishing would be the word I’d use.

How does it feel then to have this space? Did you struggle to think of what to do with it?

No, I knew what I was going to do with it, but I struggled with the idea of being in a space a small bit as it’s not something I’m used to.

What is Office of Work, your current exhibition here in the TRISKEL SAMPLE Project Space?

So, what it started as versus what it has become are two very different things. Office of Work started as a way for me to have a curatorial office, where I would interrogate how and why people maintain a creative practice within such precarity . Why do we keep going, how do we keep going, and what is missing in the Cork ecosystem to sustain practices? That was the initial thought. It was going to be quite formal, but I was going to be me.

As it has evolved, I have taken on the character of the Case Officer. I have a specific outfit that I wear like this blazer and this super long tie that I have made that trails on the ground. I found after the first week of Office of Work that I was finding it hard to put a boundary between myself and the person coming in, so it was just turning into a therapy session a small bit. The character can be a way for me to distance myself a small bit from it. When I’m this character, I’m productive and efficient and I just love working, and therefore having a formula to use in each appointment has really worked going forward.

Office of Work holds parallels to a previous project you were involved in, called Page/Process/Proceed. What interests you so much about the process of work?

Page/Process/Proceed was more text-based, the findings were published in a contained book. I like this idea of curator as instigator, where you’re asking a question or setting specific activities in place, setting constraints, then allowing people to interpret them in whatever way they want.
What data are you gathering from Office of Work and what do you hope to present in your culminating exhibition?
The actual data is becoming less relevant I feel to the process of the gathering. Though, I am surprised by some of the results, like I thought people would be feeling a lot more precarious than they are. I’ve also been collecting information on forms; I haven’t gone through them yet but I’m sure I’ll see some patterns emerge once I’ve finished going through all the charts people have done. I also shot a training video where at the end it says the results are so surprising, but really, we all know already what the majority of people need to maintain a creative practice; money, time and space to live and work in.

Tell me a bit about Bloomers, the publishing collective you are a co-director of.

I’ve been part of Bloomers since 2019, which was founded by Enid Conway in 2017, and we are an artist-led publishing collective. Originally Bloomers was a magazine, and we published eight or nine issues, and it was looking at emerging artists in Ireland through a feminist lens. We were successful in getting Arts Council of Ireland Arts Grant funding for two years which was unbelievable, and from there we turned to producing on-off, thematic publications instead of a sequential magazine format.

How do you feel about AI being used in art?

it’s just awful. I’ve seen a lot of places that disclose whether they accept AI or not which feels like the right way to go. It drives me mad when I see AI posters in the community like the GAA, I’d much prefer something basic from Microsoft Word with Comic Sans.

Your favourite artists?

Elinor (O’Donovan) is fantastic. Sarah Long will be doing a residency with you guys in a few months as well. Stephen Doyle, a queer artist from Cork, Ciara Rodgers… God, there’s loads of them!

What’s something you wish you’d been told while in school?

I think I would’ve been a bit more , a bit more like, “hey look at me over here”. You go through school and secondary school, get your ticks for being good but I think you should rock the boat a little bit.

Anything to plug?

My exhibition starts on the 16th this month, and I have a workshop here on the 18th called How to “Excel” at the Office of Work as well!

Cats or dogs?

Dogs. To be honest I love them both, but I’d want a dog.

More information on Kim Crowley’s residency, exhibition and workshops can be found here.