Exhibition: Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny, July 2026

Curated by Clara McSweeney, The Rain Tells Us Everything investigates the encroaching transformations shaping contemporary landscapes under the pressures of the climate crisis. Through trespassing, tracking, and collective singing, the participating artists examine these shifts across sound, film, fabric, and drawing, each bringing a distinct material and conceptual approach to environmental change.

Returning to Aughinish Alumina, it is a Russian-owned aluminium refinery located near Askeaton in County Limerick that was recently investigated by the Irish Times and the Guardian. The experience of living alongside both the plant and the Shannon estuary became central to artist Niamh Schmidtke’s research during their Welcome to the Neighbourhood residency with Askeaton Contemporary Arts in 2025.

Titled CHANTER this work centres around the idea of collective singing as a means of resistance, emerging in response to the complex realities of living beside the refinery. While speaking with Niamh in their London studio, where lengths of red fabric dyed with iron oxide hung throughout the space, they recalled when they first arrived in Askeaton. It seemed that everyone was singing in the shops, on the streets, and in the pubs. They also noticed the sharp red horizon line formed by the red mud, a byproduct of bauxite processing, dominating the skyline. While developing this work, these memories remained at the forefront of their mind.Here in the Regional Cultural Centre, the sound work CHANTER reverberates from a corner of the space, making you pause for a moment on the sloped floor. The work features a repeated chorus written by Bernadette Hayes and performed by members of the Inbhar Glen Community Choir, intertwined with verses written by Niamh. Verses that record experiences, including swimming in contaminated water, the long terracotta horizon and singing in protest for the estuary.

When the work was first exhibited in a ruined church in Askeaton in 2025, the singers themselves were enveloped within a spiralling structure of the red iron-oxide-dyed fabric winding round them during the performance. Here in the Regional Cultural Centre, the song weaves its way through the spirals of fabric suspended from above. 

The spiral motif, present in both the fabric installation and printed poster, is inspired not only by sound waves but also by Naomi Klein’s essay Surrealism Against Fascism, introduced to me by Niamh. This essay highlights that for those surrealist artists, the spiral became a way of imagining dreamscapes beyond the fascist and communist regimes through which they were living. Borrowing this motif, Niamh repositions a gesture of possibility, suggesting it as a space where we might come together to imagine the world differently.

Embedded within the work is also an invitation to participate in this act of collective protest by taking a page of the song, singing within the space, and then carrying it home to continue singing it elsewhere. As Niamh suggests, the work encourages us to “build your own spirals,” both inside and outside the gallery.

Further information about Aughinish Alumina can be found at https://www.stigmadamages.com/ created by artist Michele Horrigan.