Cnuasach / Some days the Tide never came in at all

Frances Bermingham Berrow is a researcher, shore worker and maker of things who works in marine, heritage/folklore research and community projects. She completed her post graduate Diploma in Art and Ecology at NCAD – Creative Futures Academy in 2024.

Frances was awarded the Glór Artist to Artist Mentorship 2023 with Alannah Robbins, Director, Interface Inagh and ‘Kelp Meitheal’ Creative Communities Project Award Clare/Creative Ireland 2024.

In her exhibition ‘Cnuasach/Some days the Tide never came in all’ she collaborates with Seaweed, plant materials, bone, paper and more to make sculptural assemblages, objects, vessels, wearable forms and things of the pocket. She uses text to map the entangled narrative of our shared human – seaweed histories, where the lives of shore people and seaware continue to be inseparable. Attending to this Natureculture and material temporalities these continual exchanges are marked in her work. Everything changes and nothing changes.

This collaborative care of her sustainable practice navigates and considers bodies of water, boundaries, the tidal commons, the rights of seaweed, domestic and vernacular practices of place, material language, rituals, the agency, biographies and qualities of seaweed and its cultural value. ‘By encountering each other we change each other’ – Monica Gagliano.