Sarah Long
Residency & Exhibition
Sarah Long is an artist based in Cork. She creates autofiction that she translates across painting, performance and publication. Sarah identifies reverberations in Irish culture and combines these references with personal stories and motifs. She views this rearranging and reinterpreting of histories and visualities as an act of feminist fictioning, highlighting moments and ideas that haunt, shape and subjugate our collective consciousness. Recent exhibitions include a solo presentation at South Tipperary Arts Centre, Clonmel, (2025) and group shows at STARLING, Limerick (2025) and Pallas Projects / Studios, Dublin, (2024-25). Her debut novella, W/w, was published by Bloomers in 2024. Zarina Muhammad (The White Pube) comments on W/w: ‘I loved it, obviously, but more than that — I admired it and will hold it very close to my chest like a talisman, in the hope that it can serve me as an example’. In a 2025 exhibition review, The Irish Times describes her practice as a ‘blend of quasi-religious iconography, personal memory, poetic allusion and feminist semiotics’.
During this exhibition and residency, Sarah takes up the position of the girl or girlishness, to obfuscate archetypes such as woman or mother. Through her character Mary, Sarah engages in an autofictionalised approach. She will develop a new body of autofictional writing into a new performance. The work plays with the notion of the aisling, an Irish poetic genre where the nation appears to the poet in a dream in the form of a woman. Mary’s dreams offer a critique of inherited language and storytelling systems, while highlighting themes and motifs that reverberate throughout Irish culture such as the impact of colonialism, Celtic mythology and an affinity with the land. Sarah will use the space to arrange collaborations with musicians and to receive critical feedback from other artists and performers. Sarah will perform two public iterations of this work in progress during the month-long residency.
In October, Sarah will present a new exhibition in collaboration with curator Niamh Brown. Sarah and Niamh will engage in a sustained dialogue and create a survey of new and reimagined works that span expanded painting and sound. The work engages with the allegory of Mother Ireland and considers the landscape as an area of contradiction, both a space for the interior world to expand and the site of a patriarchal literary tradition that personifies the land as an archetype of the female ideal. Sarah eschews depicting the female body and instead positions the ‘bodily’ in the tradition of landscape to contest the historical ‘male gaze’. She engages with practices of both figuration (employing flora, such as the fern, as an allegorical approach) and abstraction (indexing of the body through gesture). This new presentation builds open Sarah’s interest in ‘girlishness’ as a political aesthetic of resistance.
I Want To Talk About Ireland – exhibition until 24 October 2026
A Word from Curator Niamh Brown:
“I Want To Talk About Ireland is a solo exhibition of new work by Sarah Long. Borrowing the title from Sineád O’Connor’s song ‘Famine’ (1994) and harnessing O’Connor’s courage of conviction, Long sets out to share her thoughts, or maybe those of her auto-fictional persona, Mary.
Mary is a contemporary version of Mother Ireland – the female personification of the nation of Ireland, often appearing in folklore and literature. Notably she appears in the Irish poetic tradition of the Aisling. Meaning dream or vision, aislings were often used to codify expressions of political dissent and criticism. Another example, and a key reference for Long, is Eavan Boland’s ‘Mother Ireland’ first published in 1995. In Boland’s poem, she explores ideas of female sacrifice and identity while tying a physical body to the landscape. Like Sinead O’Connor, Boland was affected by her experience as a woman still living in the patriarchal society of the 1990s. By adopting Mary, Long can critique present-day suppressed female archetypes, the politics of representation, nationhood and myth through a contemporary feminist lens.
Pinks, purples, and glitter swirl around painted canvases housing dreamy symbols and abstracted landscapes, as Long employs and amplifies aesthetic tropes typically associated with girlhood. They read as a visual diary, recording significant figures and references to Irish culture, while reinterpreting historical fact and mythology and intertwining personal stories. Long views this rearrangement and reinterpretation of histories and visuals as an act of feminist fictioning, highlighting moments and ideas that haunt, shape and subjugate our collective consciousness, specifically our notions of the Irish nation.
Paint, thread, sequins and handwritten text blend and merge, while figures such as the Big Fellow (Michael Collins), Michael Collins (the astronaut), and the Long Fellow (Eamon de Valera) appear amongst the moon, foxes, potatoes, and the goddess Sionna. In Mary’s aislings (dreams), the pursuits of these men (nationalism, space exploration, the pursuit of political strength, etc.) are considered through her ‘girly’ perspective.
Girlhood is often misunderstood as something silly and frivolous, with terms such as ‘girly’ or ‘like a girl’ being used to reduce and patronise. By utilising the aesthetics of girlhood and the language of aislings, Long is reclaiming her (and Mary’s) position and points out the irony of personifying Ireland as a woman, while ignoring the voices of women. Through painting, sound and writing as material, I Want To Talk About Ireland is an invitation to embrace your inner (and outer) girl, poke fun at the patriarchy, all while probing our national and personal identity.”
Triskel Sample Project Space is a new partnership between Triskel and Sample-Studios that will provide a visual arts project space for artists, especially emerging and mid-career artists, to test ideas and to develop new work that can be seen by the public. This offers tangible career development and audience engagement opportunities to artists on their ‘home turf’ where they have a safe space to develop new ideas, within which risk-taking is possible.
Sarah Long is an artist based in Cork. She creates autofiction that she translates across painting, performance and publication. Sarah identifies reverberations in Irish culture and combines these references with personal stories and motifs. She views this rearranging and reinterpreting of histories and visualities as an act of feminist fictioning, highlighting moments and ideas that haunt, shape and subjugate our collective consciousness. Recent exhibitions include a solo presentation at South Tipperary Arts Centre, Clonmel, (2025) and group shows at STARLING, Limerick (2025) and Pallas Projects / Studios, Dublin, (2024-25). Her debut novella, W/w, was published by Bloomers in 2024. Zarina Muhammad (The White Pube) comments on W/w: ‘I loved it, obviously, but more than that — I admired it and will hold it very close to my chest like a talisman, in the hope that it can serve me as an example’. In a 2025 exhibition review, The Irish Times describes her practice as a ‘blend of quasi-religious iconography, personal memory, poetic allusion and feminist semiotics’.
During this exhibition and residency, Sarah takes up the position of the girl or girlishness, to obfuscate archetypes such as woman or mother. Through her character Mary, Sarah engages in an autofictionalised approach. She will develop a new body of autofictional writing into a new performance. The work plays with the notion of the aisling, an Irish poetic genre where the nation appears to the poet in a dream in the form of a woman. Mary’s dreams offer a critique of inherited language and storytelling systems, while highlighting themes and motifs that reverberate throughout Irish culture such as the impact of colonialism, Celtic mythology and an affinity with the land. Sarah will use the space to arrange collaborations with musicians and to receive critical feedback from other artists and performers. Sarah will perform two public iterations of this work in progress during the month-long residency.
In October, Sarah will present a new exhibition in collaboration with curator Niamh Brown. Sarah and Niamh will engage in a sustained dialogue and create a survey of new and reimagined works that span expanded painting and sound. The work engages with the allegory of Mother Ireland and considers the landscape as an area of contradiction, both a space for the interior world to expand and the site of a patriarchal literary tradition that personifies the land as an archetype of the female ideal. Sarah eschews depicting the female body and instead positions the ‘bodily’ in the tradition of landscape to contest the historical ‘male gaze’. She engages with practices of both figuration (employing flora, such as the fern, as an allegorical approach) and abstraction (indexing of the body through gesture). This new presentation builds open Sarah’s interest in ‘girlishness’ as a political aesthetic of resistance.
I Want To Talk About Ireland – exhibition until 24 October 2026
A Word from Curator Niamh Brown:
“I Want To Talk About Ireland is a solo exhibition of new work by Sarah Long. Borrowing the title from Sineád O’Connor’s song ‘Famine’ (1994) and harnessing O’Connor’s courage of conviction, Long sets out to share her thoughts, or maybe those of her auto-fictional persona, Mary.
Mary is a contemporary version of Mother Ireland – the female personification of the nation of Ireland, often appearing in folklore and literature. Notably she appears in the Irish poetic tradition of the Aisling. Meaning dream or vision, aislings were often used to codify expressions of political dissent and criticism. Another example, and a key reference for Long, is Eavan Boland’s ‘Mother Ireland’ first published in 1995. In Boland’s poem, she explores ideas of female sacrifice and identity while tying a physical body to the landscape. Like Sinead O’Connor, Boland was affected by her experience as a woman still living in the patriarchal society of the 1990s. By adopting Mary, Long can critique present-day suppressed female archetypes, the politics of representation, nationhood and myth through a contemporary feminist lens.
Pinks, purples, and glitter swirl around painted canvases housing dreamy symbols and abstracted landscapes, as Long employs and amplifies aesthetic tropes typically associated with girlhood. They read as a visual diary, recording significant figures and references to Irish culture, while reinterpreting historical fact and mythology and intertwining personal stories. Long views this rearrangement and reinterpretation of histories and visuals as an act of feminist fictioning, highlighting moments and ideas that haunt, shape and subjugate our collective consciousness, specifically our notions of the Irish nation.
Paint, thread, sequins and handwritten text blend and merge, while figures such as the Big Fellow (Michael Collins), Michael Collins (the astronaut), and the Long Fellow (Eamon de Valera) appear amongst the moon, foxes, potatoes, and the goddess Sionna. In Mary’s aislings (dreams), the pursuits of these men (nationalism, space exploration, the pursuit of political strength, etc.) are considered through her ‘girly’ perspective.
Girlhood is often misunderstood as something silly and frivolous, with terms such as ‘girly’ or ‘like a girl’ being used to reduce and patronise. By utilising the aesthetics of girlhood and the language of aislings, Long is reclaiming her (and Mary’s) position and points out the irony of personifying Ireland as a woman, while ignoring the voices of women. Through painting, sound and writing as material, I Want To Talk About Ireland is an invitation to embrace your inner (and outer) girl, poke fun at the patriarchy, all while probing our national and personal identity.”
Triskel Sample Project Space is a new partnership between Triskel and Sample-Studios that will provide a visual arts project space for artists, especially emerging and mid-career artists, to test ideas and to develop new work that can be seen by the public. This offers tangible career development and audience engagement opportunities to artists on their ‘home turf’ where they have a safe space to develop new ideas, within which risk-taking is possible.
Triskel Arts Centre is proud to announce its association with The F-Rating initiative. Developed in the Bath Film Festival in 2014, the F-Rating is a new film rating which will highlight those with a strong female voice.