Join us on Saturday 11 April at 2:30pm for a special In Conversation event with Annemarie Ní Churreáin and Niamh McCann, hosted by poet and journalist Gerard Smyth. Further information and booking can be found at the link below.

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Boy Dancer is a new exhibition emerging from the first collaboration between poet Annemarie Ní Churreáin and visual artist Niamh McCann. A Solstice-commissioned project, Boy Dancer interweaves a series of poems by Ní Churreáin with line drawings and installation by McCann, exploring grief, ritual, and transformation. Boy Dancer unfolds as a textual wake-an act of keeping vigil, remembering, and celebrating in response to the loss of Ní Churreáin’s foster brother. Her poetry practice, often concerned with cultures of silence and care in Ireland, is deeply rooted by her interests in place, native language, and folklore. McCann’s visual response embraces the lyrical and mythical qualities of the poems, drawing on imagery of birds and beasts as seers, omens, and witnesses-resounding McCann’s allegorical and personal collaborative practice.

As a response to Boy Dancer, the exhibition includes drawings, wall paintings, a sound installation and a sculptural work titled ‘Turn Again’.

What if I steeped bilberries in a vein of water?
What if I boiled the pink heart of a foxglove?
What if I could swim to the end of your sleep
and pull you back with a leaf of birch?
What if I could draw a lucky caul
over your newborn face?

This is Solstice’s second commissioned work with Annemarie Ní Churreáin, the first being The Foundling Crib, which was included in her second poetry collection, The Poison Glen (Gallery Press). Solstice has previously worked with Niamh McCann on Just Left of Copernicus (2012) and Someone Decides Hawk or Dove (2023), the latter a recipient of the ART:2023 Decade of Centenaries Open Call Award, supported by the Arts Council and the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.