Eslam Abd El Salam is a visual artist based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. His work focuses on walking as a pedagogical practice, and is centred around the body: the body in motion, in contact with nature, and in the presence of other bodies.

Through the mediums of analogue photography, polaroids, text and mixed media, Eslam considers notions of synchronicity in relation to friendship and serendipitous encounters with others. Eslam’s photography often takes place in domestic settings, spaces in which playfulness and vulnerability are combined. Deeply embedded in spirituality, Eslam’s work expands on what it means to surrender to the present moment, with others and in nature, and with intuition as a guiding principle.

Embracing naivety in all its forms, Eslam’s work views openness as a means of creating mutual recognition.

Phillip McCrilly is a Belfast-based artist, and chef. Interested in the transgressive and interdisciplinary possibilities of food, hospitality and education, McCrilly’s work explores the idea of threshold in often collaborative forms. Considering cruising and foraging as likeminded deviant practices, his research centres around queer collective acts of land and property reclamation, speculating on the abundant possibilities for non-normative ecologies and intimacies.

Previously a co-director at Catalyst Arts, and FRUIT SHOP, he is currently studying an alternative MA in Food & Art Studies with the Gramounce. Recent food-based projects include kitchen residencies at Bakari Bakery and The American Bar, as well as wet HEAT sweats without scent, a Platform Commission for 40th edition of EVA International.

Tara McGinn (they/she) is an interdisciplinary artist and writer based between Belfast, NI and Enniscorthy, ROI. Her practice combines sculptural (re)production, image-based assemblage and reflex/ctive writing which connects subjects of trauma, memory, and identity to the syntaxes of domestic spaces and notions of sentimentality; activating the narratives of materials, building fictions and speculative sculptures, mobilising the discomfort of the uncanny, critiquing the aesthetics of the familiar, and perverting acts of erasure - the language of intimacy and loss.

McGinn is a former Catalyst Arts director and is a studio resident at Flax Art Studios in Belfast. Recent shows include: Mother Tongue group show at the MAC, Belfast; Betwixt: held group show at Mimosa House Gallery, London; and An Intimate Public solo exhibition at PS2 curated by Cecelia Graham and Grace Jackson. McGinn was also selected as an artist in residence at the Irish Cultural Centre in Paris in 2024 with support from the Wexford County Council and Wexford Arts Centre.

Sorcha McNamara works in abstraction. She makes paintings out of things she finds, building something together piece by piece, until it looks like a picture, but isn't. She often steals things that are thrown away, or no longer of interest to anyone. As well as being an exciting, generative and tenderly transgressive way to work, this process allows her to make stuff that becomes interesting, or something she might want to look at for a while.

Based in Mayo, Ireland, and other places, Sorcha McNamara holds an MA in Art + Research Collaboration from Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology (2024), and a BA in Painting from Limerick School of Art & Design (2019). Her works have been exhibited in Ireland and internationally, in Tokyo, Lisbon and London. Previous solo exhibitions include Fathomless Arms, Ballina Arts Centre, Mayo (2023); (dis)attachments, The Hyde Bridge, Sligo (2022) and Oonagh Young Gallery, Dublin (2022). Her practice is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and Mayo County Council Arts Office.

Thursday 4 July, 5pm
Catalyst Art, 6 Joy's Entry

As part of ‘soft listings’ Phillip McCrilly led a collaborative Kvass*-making workshop where participants learned how to make Kvass and took away their own Kvass-in-progress to ferment at home.

The workshop was an attempt to resolve and connect two previous residencies at the American Bar and Bakari Bakery, using Bakari sourdough starter to ferment the Kvass. McCrilly’s work considered Kvass and the model of cradle-to-cradle design as possible gestural connections across different sites of production and proposed alternate modes of artistic activity, whilst speculating on emerging models of sustainability as legitimate methods of enquiry.

* Kvass is a fermented cereal-based beverage originating from northeastern Europe.

Saturday 6th July, 2024
4pm

A roundtable conversation and some light nibbles with artists Eslam Abd El Salam, Philip McCrilly, Tara McGinn, Sorcha McNamara, and curator Silvia Koistinen reflecting on and discussing the processes behind ‘soft listings’, on the final day of the exhibition.