KUNSTVEREIN

Diagonal Acts explores themes of memory, place and connection, reflecting on gaps, fragments, edges and thresholds within archaeology, geology, sculpture and staged performance. The exhibition uses diagonal lines as a way to map and imagine the movements across and between such disciplines. There is a significant focus on how the body connects to these themes.

The exhibition includes sculptures made from a range of materials, including wax, stone, glass and steel. The material outcomes in Diagonal Acts are supported by a range of collaborations, and connected by a public programme of generative elements devised to critically engage audiences in person and online, enhancing and expanding participation and access. Collaborations include —

• Technical Drawings of Marie's artworks by archaeological illustrator Róisín O'Meadhra
• 'Leaning and Lifting', a response text by writer Megan Macedo
• A digital repository at www.diagonalacts.com created by graphic designer Alex Synge
• A sculptural wheelbarrow for transporting soil samples made by artist Liliane Puthod
• A blanket incorporating earthworm poo to nourish soil, by Laura Ní Fhlaibhín

Thinking across and between sites through conditional modes of encounter, Diagonal Acts explores diagonality as a relational and collaborative stance, temporarily ‘leaning’ against contexts, communities and histories.

About the artist:

Marie Farrington is an artist whose practice reflects on the act of making through geological and archaeological lenses. Using casting, carving and other sculptural processes, she engages with memory through situated encounters with landscape and architecture. Her work makes formal reference to field sampling, built heritage and histories of display. Exhibitions include Imprints & Breadcrumbs, CCA Odapark, Venray, 2025 (forthcoming); Strata, CCA Derry-Londonderry, 2024; The Unseen Eyebeam Crossed, puntWG Amsterdam, 2024; Glossaries for Forwardness, Museum Building, Trinity College, Dublin 2023; Hammerheads, Solstice Arts Centre, Navan, Co. Meath, 2023; FAULTS+FOLDS, Oonagh Young Gallery, Dublin 2022; The Wave, Collecteurs: The Museum of Private Collections, (online), 2022; and A Vague Anxiety, Irish Museum of Modern Art, 2019. She recently delivered two permanent public commissions: Guiding Light, a Percent for Art Commission at Ardgillan Community College, Balbriggan in 2024 and Swim in the landscape, walk on the sea, a public commission for Skerries Art Trail, Dublin coast in 2023. Farrington holds a Three Year Membership at Temple Bar Gallery+Studios, Dublin. She is a part-time lecturer at the National College of Art and Design. She has held residencies at Atelier WG, Amsterdam in 2024; SEA Foundation, Tilburg, 2023; Dublin City Council’s Residential Studios, Albert Cottages, 2023; Fire Station Artists’ Studios, 2018-2022. Her work is held in the permanent collections of The Arts Council of Ireland; The Centre for the Environment, Trinity College Dublin; and the Office of Public Works.

https://www.mariefarrington.com/

Curated by Kate Strain Diagonal Acts is accompanied by Kunstverein Aughrim in a curatorial capacity throughout 2025. The project is supported by the Arts Council (through a Visual Arts Project Award 2025), Culture Ireland, and Wicklow County Arts Office, through the annual Strategic Project Award Scheme.