hashtag WIP employs a collaborative, process based, method of exhibition making where three regionally based artists Anna Spearman, Kian Benson Bailes and Orla McHardy will come together and use the gallery as a studio and test space. Following a series of visits to one another’s studios, the artists will present a range of works in progress – the incomplete and ongoing, the trial, the error, the unfinished, pieces that do not hide all traces of creation, that reveal and display their processes of production.

This exhibition offers the artists involved the opportunity to share work and work practices, and to develop and evolve works collectively. It considers the gallery as a place to re-evaluate the direction of a work, and become a space where works gather a sense of independence. This project attempts to publicly articulate the essence and energy of the studio space, and to encapsulate the life, potential, transitions and transformation of artworks.

Kian Benson Bailes is an Irish artist residing in the northwest of Ireland. He graduated from IADT, Dublin in 2016, his multifaceted practice explores rural Ireland, visual language and identity politics. His recent exhibitions include ‘Bog Cottage: Life in the Community’ The Hyde Bridge Gallery, Sligo, ‘Queer As You Are’ Luan Gallery, Athlone and ‘Shiftings’Kilkenny Arts Office, Kilkenny.

Orla McHardy is an artist and educator. Her work has been exhibited and screened internationally. Working through expanded animation, video, text, documentary, collage, sculptural installation and within a tradition of feminism(s), her current work examines where value is placed (and not placed) on the hidden time of care, love and labour.

Anna Spearman is a visual artist based in Sligo.  Her studio practice is concerned with the vast and intricate material world that she encounters in her day to day life, and the curious and playful language inherent in the processes of both object-making and painting. Anna holds a BA in History of Art (TCD), a BA in Fine Art (Sligo IT) and an MA in Fine Art:Contemporary Practice (University College Falmouth).  Recent exhibitions include ‘Loose Parts’ Roscommon Arts Centre, 2021, ‘…and Other Things’ Hyde Bridge Gallery, 2020.