Back to What's On
Each year Lismore Castle Arts invites an artist to work alongside a local community over an extended period on a collaborative creative project called A Space For Lismore. Working closely with our Learning Team and using Lismore Castle Arts’ new print studio as a base, artist Debbie Godsell has spent the year facilitating a series of workshops with a group of women from Lismore.
Drawing on the histories and lived experiences of women in the town, participants explored printmaking processes including screen printing, lino printing, drypoint, monoprint and cyanotype. Through conversation and making, the group reflected on themes of identity, belonging, memory and place, with printmaking becoming a way of giving personal narratives a material presence.
The project now culminates in a new exhibition at St Carthage Hall presenting a series of soft- sculptural self-portraits created by the participating women. Constructed from repurposed vintage textiles and incorporating personal materials and embellishments, these works weave together individual stories with shared histories, presenting a thoughtful exploration of self- representation through contemporary printmaking.
Join us for the exhibition launch on Saturday, 22 August, 3 – 5pm.
Open Fridays, Saturdays & Sundays, 12 – 5pm, 22 August – 20 September 2026. Admission Free. St Carthage Hall, Chapel St, Lismore, P51 WV96
Debbie Godsell studied at the TUS Limerick School of Art & Design and the MTU Crawford College of Art & Design, Cork where she graduated with an MA in Fine Art. Her work is primarily lens-based and has evolved to produce outcomes in two dimensional works, sculptural forms and video. Interrogating and re-evaluating themes of identity and belonging through our contested historical relationship with land are the motivational forces underpinning each work. New outcomes explore a peripatetic culture clash of history, tradition, custom and ethno-cultural notions. Debbie’s work is collected by the National Gallery of Ireland, the OPW and the Crawford Art Gallery as part of the National Collection. She is a recipient of the Arts Council Visual Arts Bursary Awards 2022 and 2023, Cork County Arts Bursary 2022, Cork County Arts Ballinglen Artist Residency 2019, Cork County Arts Office Tyrone Guthrie Bursary 2017 Award.
