Residencies
Residency Opportunities at Backwater Artists Group
Backwater Artists Group offers a range of residency opportunities exclusively for its members, supporting artists through dedicated time, space and resources to develop their practices. Whether providing dedicated studio space for sustained research or a flexible project space for experimentation and public engagement, our residencies are designed to foster artistic development, collaboration, and dialogue.
Each year, we advertise an annual open call to our member artists for our studio and project residencies.
Current residency programmes include:
- Backwater Artists Network Project Residency – six-month studio residencies for members of the Backwater Artists Network.
- Studio 12 Project Residency – flexible project-based residencies supporting research, experimentation and public engagement.
Backwater Artists Network Project Residency
This Project Residency provides two network members each year with a dedicated studio for six months within Backwater Artists Group. The residency offers time and space to develop new work within a supportive artistic community and concludes with a public studio visit and artist talk.
January – July 2026 | Joy McAllen
Joy McAllen is a painter and stained glass artist from Cork. She studied Fine Art at the Crawford College of Art and Design, Cork, and Traditional Glass Painting at Williams & Byrnes, Ludlow, Wales. After many years working primarily in stained glass and completing public and private commissions across Ireland, Joy used the residency to pursue a more personal painting practice.
During the residency, Joy immersed herself in the exploration of dream imagery. What began as an investigation into stained glass templates evolved into a more personal and meaningful exploration of paint, leading her work in unexpected directions.
“Having the space to work in such a supportive artists network has been transformative to my practice.”
August 2026 – January 2027 | Brian Barry
Brian Barry is an artist printmaker from Cork. Travel and a love of primitive photography inspired his early work. He’s exhibited two collections of pinhole photos, printed as etchings inspired by travels in Latin America. He lived in Spain for more than a decade where he started an event called Impresiones Gigantes which ran for three years. This was a collective of printmakers who brought their studios on to the street and transformed an industrial road roller into a printing press. He also studied in Granada’s Escuela de Arte during this period. His work has been included in group shows in Ireland, Spain, Australia, USA, Italy and Norway. His most recent solo exhibition, entitled ‘The Toxic Union & Other Stories’, took place in Serbia in March 2022 as part of the Belgrade Irish Festival. He’s also a longtime member of Cork Printmakers.
Studio 12 Project Residencies
Studio 12 is an experimental exhibition and project space for artistic research, experimentation and public engagement.
The Studio 12 Project Residency offers members the opportunity to test new ideas, develop work-in-progress, collaborate with others and present their work and their ideas to the public. Residencies vary in duration and format, allowing artists to tailor the space to the needs of their practice. The space has previously been used as a closed-door project work space and it has also hosted public screenings, and performances.
January 2026 | Siobhán Collins
Siobhán Collins is an Irish visual artist living in Cork, Ireland. She works primarily in drawing and painting, using several mediums. She has an interdisciplinary background in fine art, English literature and critical theory. She has published articles on poetry, embodiment, perception and aesthetics.
During this residency, Siobhán explored becoming-with, a term from Donna Haraway that invites us to notice how we grow and change alongside others. With a simple setup of a mirror, a plant, and an easel, she explored the poetic possibilities of becoming-plant, responding to Studio 12’s shifting light, rhythms, and changes in colour and form. This was an experiment in noticing differently—letting the space and the living plant influence the paintings, almost like creating a shared portrait.
The residency concluded with an artist talk sharing her research, work and process.
August 2026 | Ciara Rodgers
Ciara Rodgers is a Cork City based visual artist who works across drawing, installation, performance, and photography. Solo presentations include Paper Façades make Tender Follies at Pallas Projects/Studios (2026) and Folly | Façade at GOMA, Waterford (2024) Rodgers holds an MA in Art & Process from MTU CCAD (2018) and is completing a practice-based Ph.D at SETU Waterford.
Drawing on psychogeography and the material ethos of Arte Povera, Ciara Rodgers’ Studio 12 project residency investigates city traces of social, economic, and gendered experience through its physical fabric. Through processes of collecting, documenting, and transforming found objects, construction debris and materials, drawings, and Polaroid photographs, Rodgers will create experimental and fragile installations that challenge ideas of permanence.
“Studio 12 offers an opportunity to slow down, experiment, and reflect. I’m looking forward to using the residency to revisit recent projects while developing new material responses to Cork City through walking, observation, and collecting. The space provides the freedom to test ideas that sit between drawing, installation, and found materials. I will allow the work to evolve through process rather than predetermined outcomes. I’m excited to see how the city itself becomes a collaborator, revealing overlooked surfaces, and everyday remnants.”
What Artists Say
