Interface is an artist-led space and residency programme for visual artists, musicians, writers and dancers in Connemara on the West coast of Ireland. The studio is located in a former salmon hatchery, a space shared with a number of innovative scientific research projects. Interface offers opportunities for artists to engage with this unique environment and to explore intersections between science and art.
Much of the programming at Interface is centred on a long-term project of ecological restoration taking place on site. The woodland symposium sees artists returning year on year to reflect on the gradual transformation of a barren monocultural forest to native woodland with healthy biodiversity.

The 40 paintings in 'One Day: 40 Sunrises' by Ian Wieczorek are the result of a Covid lockdown project, based on livestreamed webcam imagery of sunrises around the world over the course of one day: 15 July 2020, tracking sunrise around the globe. The locations were chosen to be as geographically diverse as possible. Numerically, the 40 paintings also acknowledge the phenomenon of ‘quarantine’, a word deriving from the Italian ‘quaranta giorni’ (‘forty days’), the period that ships were required to re main in isolation before passengers and crew could disembark during a much earlier pandemic, the Black Death.

The result is a record of this transient experience over the course of one day, paintings of digitally mediated images rendered in the medium of oil on canvas, establishing a dialogue between a ‘traditional’ medium and contemporary digital vernacular. It celebrates the possibility of shared experience, and reminds us that, wherever we are in the world, we are all connected.

'Fakir Sandals': Studded with nails, these sandals are worn by a Fakir, a Muslim or Hindu religious figure in India who lives a life of fasting, prayer and abstinence. The sandals are worn to show the power of the fakir’s spirit to conquer physical pain. By overcoming the sensation of pain, through many years of practice, Fakirs hope to achieve spiritual enlightenment. – Noel Arrigan