^ is a collective based in Manorhamilton, Leitrim. Our five members are Tara Baoth Mooney, Shane Finan, James Kelly, Laura McMorrow, and Sonya Swarte. We collectively occupy an artist-led studio and experimental space in Manorhamilton, opened in September 2022. Over the past three years, we have led events in north Leitrim in response to environmental grief, care, and tending to the land.

For this exhibition-environment, we explore meadows, untrodden ground, and forgotten growth in north Leitrim. In these liminal spaces, a succession of plants create worlds upon worlds, each one following the last. These worlds are an amalgam of the soil, the air, the places, the fauna, and other unpredictable actors like humans. The way these places grow offer ways to think about working together.

As part of this exhibition-environment, we have invited other artists and collectives based in north Leitrim and the surrounding area to reflect on how wilder spaces can offer chances to thrive and flourish.

Tara Baoth-Mooney (she/her) is an interdisciplinary art practitioner whose work encompasses sound and visual art, including performance. Tara’s  practice uses storytelling as a way in to meaning making around human – non human attachment and lived experience.

Shane Finan (he/them) assembles artworks and projects from interactive contemporary technologies, found objects, and traditional media. Their practice is as both artist and creative producer on collaborative projects. Their work is research based and explores the impact of technologies on human and nonhuman actors in rural places. They hold an Master’s in Interactive Digital Media (Trinity College Dublin 2013) and a BA in Fine Art (IT Sligo 2008).

James Kelly creates sculptural objects and film that are concerned with non-waking realms and especially explore a rare type of dream in which he feels the presence of another reality that seems external to his own subconscious. LOLS! He received an MFA in Sculpture from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2014, had his first solo exhibition Lightning Path at the Leitrim Sculpture Sculpture Centre in 2023, and lives in the Glenade valley of north Leitrim.

Laura McMorrow is a visual artist from Leitrim. She holds a Masters in Fine art from the University of Ulster in Belfast (2012) and she graduated with a degree in painting from Limerick School of Art and Design (2008). Her practice incorporates video installation, animation, sculpture, collage, and painting. Recent solo exhibitions include The Gardener Digs at The Ashford Gallery, RHA and The Lost Acre at Leitrim Sculpture Centre.

Sonya Swarte is an artist based in north Leitrim. She holds a BA in Archaeology (2005 Leiden University) and an MA in Creative Arts (2022 ATU Sligo). Her practice is focussed on the local in north Leitrim. She completed a Technical Development Residency at the Leitrim Sculpture Centre in 2024, exhibiting some of the work produced in 2025, and has screened an animation at the Galway Arts Festival (2022).

Read more about Waking the Land: artist-led social events inspired by Benbo mountain