Cavan Arts Festival: 'Chambergrist' by Barry O'Halpin, Alex Petcu & Elaine Harrington

Chambergrist is an immersive work of experimental live music and clay sculpture, born from a collaboration between artist Elaine Harrington, composer-guitarist Barry O’Halpin (Crash Ensemble, Alarmist) & percussionist Alex Petcu-Colan (Crash Ensemble, Hard Rain Ensemble).

Performances at 6pm and 8pm at a secret subterrannean location - Meet at front of The Court House, Farnham Street, Cavan, H12 E0V3.

Drawing from the artists’ own forays into the Burren’s karst limestone caves and to gnarled cliffs and abandoned mines of the Copper Coast, Chambergrist seeks to evoke the abstract sublime of rocky landscapes forged into shape over deep time.

In this premiere live performance, Barry O’Halpin’s exploratory electric guitar and Alex Petcu-Colan’s array of gongs, tiles and other percussion form a hypnotic, evolving soundscape that is at once mineral, metallic and organically human.

Together with Elaine Harrington’s vividly formed clay sculptures, this dream-like musical narrative is an imagined journey through these over- and underground spaces via the processes that shape them, drawing on the artists’ direct experience along with intangible imagery on a scale far beyond human access. Bare spots of illumination in the pitch black; crystalline glints on wet limestone walls; the metallic clang of human intrusion into land; the meandering, tunneling action of flowing cave water.

This project has been generously supported with funds from the Arts Council of Ireland, and with guidance and on-site expertise from iCRAG (Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre in Applied Geosciences). With special thanks to UCD Parity Studios Artist-in-Residence Programme.

Sculpture: Elaine Harrington. Music Composed by: Barry O’Halpin. Music Performed by: Alex Petcu-Colan (percussion) & Barry O’Halpin (electric guitar).

Tickets

Tickets available from Cavan Arts Festival