Press Release
West Cork Arts Centre
Archiving Skibbereen
18 August to 17 September 2006

Archiving Skibbereen is an art project with a difference. Artist Neva Elliott is seeking groups from Skibbereen and district to teach her their skills. Neva is looking for the opportunity to learn any new activity from football to writing, ceramics to speech making, animal welfare to singing.

If you are part of a group, society, or club, of any type or any size, drop in and see Neva at the Archiving Skibbereen Studio or send information to her on your group. The Archiving Skibbereen Studio will be at a number of locations around Skibbereen from 18 August to 17 September. Look at the Southern Star to see where the Studio will be located.

Neva Elliott is on residency for four weeks in Skibbereen to devote her time exclusively to participating in and researching the activities of local groups and to form a personal snap shot of Skibbereen and district society. She will create an archive of this information which will be exhibited at West Cork Arts Centre as part of the exhibition Fresh: Re-imagining the Collection.

Neva is based in a mobile, temporary studio space that she has specifically designed to allow her to work in different environments. It allows her to rove, either with the flat pack studio itself, or with the plans to reconstruct it. Materials for constructing the studio are readily available, lengths of two by two, plywood and brackets. The mobile studio is a lean-to structure with a dual role; it is dependent on and a supplement to the place in which it is built. It delineates a space for artistic activity and it is a nucleus for interactions with the new environment.

Archiving Skibbereen is a commentary on the diversity of human interests and interaction. The artist is interfacing with the environment and society through participation with individuals and groups and the accumulation of experience and knowledge. The audience relationship is as significant a material to her work, as any physical construct. Neva’s presence and investigation into group activity draws attention to the nature of social encounters. Her timetable over the coming weeks will be increasingly generated by those who she meets and through casual or intentional communications and networks.

Born 1976 Neva Elliott is an Irish artist living and working in London where she has recently completed a Masters in Fine Art at Central St. Martins.

For further information or to contribute to Archiving Skibbereen please contact:

Ann Davoren 028 22090 annwestcorkarts@eircom.net or Neva Elliott info@nevaelliott.com 087 2801597