In Conversation Event | Thurs 26 June

Please join us for the In Conversation Event with Enid Conway from Bloomers Magazine, Amna Walayat & Tina Whelan about their show Arranged Mirage.

Enid Conway is the founding co-director of Bloomers, Arts Council funded feminist publishing collective that produces books, exhibitions and more – in collaboration with Ireland-based artists, writers and activists.

Active since 2018 and based in Cork, Bloomers have produced 12 titles that have featured over 200 contributors, bringing together unique perspectives that explore themes such as the body, housing, technology, the land and more.

Amna Walayat I am a Cork-based visual artist of Pakistani origin, working through Indo-Persian motifs  and symbolic language to explore identity, displacement, and cultural duality. I work from Backwater Artists Studio and am a member of Sample-Studios and Art Nomads. My practice has been shown at EVA International, IMMA, RHA, The Dock, Sirius Arts Centre, and in major venues in Pakistan. My work is part of the Arts Council Collection, and I have received several Arts Council awards. I hold an MA in Art History from UCC and an MA in Fine Arts from Punjab University. Before moving to Ireland, I worked with the Pakistan National Council of the Arts and Alhamra Arts Council, Lahore, Pakistan. I also lead the annual Basant Festival in Ireland, celebrating South Asian identity through community and art.

“Search of a Lost Paradise” is a recurring theme in my work, returning with new experimentation in Arranged Mirage, created in collaboration with Tina Whelan. This theme reflects a deep human longing—to return to a place of grace, home, or divinity after a fall.

Through symbols like portals, Indo-Persian landscapes, staircases or ladders, stylized figures, suspended moments, and fictional spaces, I explore forms of loss and the desire for renewal. Whether it’s the migrant’s yearning for home, the pursuit of utopia, or humanity’s fall from divinity to mortality—or even immorality, particularly in a feminist context—my work gives form to the universal struggle to reclaim what has been lost. This pursuit is not only about return—it is about redemption and reimagining. It reflects the human drive to reconstruct beauty and meaning in the aftermath of rupture. My work seeks to visualize this enduring search—a journey both personal and collective, mythical and contemporary —for a lost paradise.

Tina Whelan is an Irish visual artist, researcher and story-teller. She studied at Belfast School of Art and MTU Crawford College of Art & Design. In 2021, she graduated from the MTU Crawford College of Art & Design, with a Research-Masters on: the impact of national ideology and Catholic ethics on Irish obstetrics.

Her practice began with painting, performance and film. Later work merges paint, print and textiles with sculpture, which has led to her using a wide range of processes to form and express her transdisciplinary, multi-media art.

A recurring theme; looks at how oppression, hurt and memories get passed on through the generations and the complexities of navigating this landscape: particularly in how these manifest in the female body.

Recent exhibitions include Lavit Gallery Annual Exhibition, Cork (2024), Borders; Rua Red Gallery Annual Exhibition, Dublin (2024), Songs from A Lost Paradise, Laneway Gallery, Cork (2024), curated by Monika Sapielak, Deep Time, Punishment Block, Spike Island (2024). Royal Hibernian Academy Annual Exhibitions 191st,192nd and 193rd.

Thursday June 26th | 1 – 2pm