International Women’s Day 2022

Amanda Verlaque
Amanda Verlaque is a writer for stage, screen and VR. The MAC, Belfast produced her critically acclaimed debut play Distortion, and her radio play Lolly, which featured in their On the Street Where We Live audio series (which she also executive produced). She’s just made her debut as a director for VR with her short film Egg, produced by RETìníZE. Amanda’s career in the creative industries began as an arts and entertainment journalist before moving into TV drama and film. She enjoyed 25 years as an award winning script editor, storyliner, producer and executive producer on dramas such as Holy Cross, Red Rock and Ups & Downs for broadcasters and companies including BBC, RTE, Blinder Films and Tiger Aspect.

Amanda’s latest play, This Sh*t Happens All the Time, is a Lyric Theatre production in association with the Imagine! Festival of Ideas and Politics. It’s a powerful new one-woman play which uses personal experience to explore misogyny, coercive control, and queer-baiting to ask why the privileges and protections granted to most of society remain disgracefully out of reach for Northern Ireland’s LGBT+ community. It’s on at the Lyric Theatre Belfast from 22 March – 2 April. For tickets visit www.lyrictheatre.co.uk

Abby Oliveira
Abby Oliveira is a spoken-word poet, writer, performer, and arts facilitator based in Northern Ireland. She has performed in the mucky fields of festivals such as Glastonbury, Electric Picnic, and Body&Soul Festival, the National Concert Hall of Ireland, Dublin as well as internationally.

Abby has been a contributor to multiple BBC and RTE radio shows over the years: in 2019 she was commissioned by BBC Radio Foyle to write the station's official 40th birthday poem. In 2018 she was commissioned by producer Conor McKay to contribute poetry to the BBC Radio 4 documentary '27 Clarendon Street'. In 2017 she was commissioned by producer Alan Meaney to contribute poetry to the RTE radio series 'Reverberations'

She is also the lyricist/frontwoman of Dublin-based electronic & spoken word band 7 Daughters and collaborates extensively and theatre-makers/technicians. Visit www.abbyoliveria.com

Kate Guelke
Kate Guelke is a Northern Irish opera director and producer. As Artistic Director of Spark Opera, Kate has directed and produced full-scale opera classics, pop up opera, operas for children, community operas, music theatre / new opera shorts. Her work has garnered the company an Allianz Business Branding nomination ('Operation Fun'), a National Lottery Northern Irish Arts Award and National Finalist/Shortlist nomination ('Requiem for the Disappeared'), a Boston Contempo Arts Festival Director’s Choice Award ('Science') and a Student Entrepreneurs of the Year Award ('Bright Sparks'), in addition to critical acclaim in the local and national press. Spark Opera is a HATCH company at the Mac Belfast.

As a freelance director Kate has directed and assistant directed over a dozen productions for NI Opera, the Belfast Ensemble, Aachen Opera, Den Jyske Opera, the Yorke Trust and Stage Beyond.

Kate is also producing 'Verboten und Verbannt! Degenerate Music' - a concert of music repressed by the Nazis as part of the Imagine Festival; as well as facilitating 'It's Never Too Late' with Women's Aid ABCLN, both through Spark Opera funded by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. She is also directing 'The Great Dictator' for Stage Beyond and is a recent recipient of the Arts Council of Ireland’s Opera Bursary, researching community opera models.

Kate is currently working with The Belfast Ensemble as a company manager on their award-winning production, 'ABOMINATION - A DUP OPERA', touring to the Abbey Theatre and the Lyric Theatre this spring. Visit www.lyrictheatre.co.uk

Shannon Yee
Writer – Educator - Arts programmer
Shannon Yee is a biracial, queer, immigrant playwright with a disability. She a producer, a collaborator, a creator and a theatre maker. In 2017, Shannon was one of four artists to receive the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s highest honour, a Major Individual Artist Award. Shannon has extensive experience with project management and producing, mentoring and teaching and has founded and managed festivals; taught children, young people, adults and policy makers; designed and delivered arts-based curriculum and training; secured and managed grants; and built local and international networks for her work.

Shannon excels at working across different artistic disciplines and collaborates extensively with people who don’t traditionally work with the arts, such as in science and health. Shannon is also the Co-Director of ForInsight, a company dedicated to improving the lives of people living with brain injuries, learning disabilities and/or Autism, and the families that support them. Visit www.s-yee.co.uk

Úna Monaghan
Harper - Composer - Researcher - Sound Engineer
Úna Monaghan is a harper, composer, researcher and sound artist from Belfast. Her recent work has combined traditional music with bronze sculpture, sound art and movement sensors. Her compositions have been presented on BBC and RTÉ television and radio, and in theatre productions, festivals and conferences internationally. She performs with harp and computer, and released an album of her compositions for Irish harp and electronics, named “For” in 2018.

Úna has held artist residencies at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, the Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas Montréal, and the Future Music Lab at the Atlantic Music Festival, Maine, USA.

Úna also works as a sound engineer specialising in Irish traditional music, and experimental, live electronic and multichannel music, a role in which she travels worldwide.

Úna gained a PhD from the Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queen’s University Belfast in 2015 and held the Rosamund Harding Research Fellowship in Music at Newnham College, University of Cambridge, from 2016-2019. Her research examines the intersections between Irish traditional music, experimental music practices, improvisation and interactive technologies. In 2019 she received the inaugural Liam O’Flynn Award from the Arts Council of Ireland and the National Concert Hall, Dublin. Visit www.unamonaghan.com

Sharon Kelly
Visual artist, Sharon Kelly, currently has a survey exhibition, Resting Pressure, on display at the F.E. McWilliam Gallery. Including work from the late 1980s to the present, Resting Pressure provides an unprecedented opportunity to explore the development of Kelly’s practice over more than three decades.

Through processes that include drawing, watercolour, printmaking, sculpture and video, the artist sensitively explores ideas around resilience, physical endurance, fragility, illness, motherhood and grief and poses what Kate Antosik-Parsons has identified as the ‘fundamental questions about the experiences of the body in relation to the larger meanings of life’.

Featuring work from private and public collections including the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the Royal Ulster Academy, The Balliglen Museum of Art, County Mayo and the Boyle Civic Art Collection, this is the largest exhibition of Kelly’s art held to date.

Based at QQS Artist Studios in Belfast, Sharon Kelly, is currently working with female boxers from Corinthians Boxing Club, as part of Dublin City Council Culture Company Sport & Arts Residency. In 2020 she was the recipient of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s Fellowship at the British School at Rome and she has also recently been awarded The Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant which will support the creation of new work.

Resting Pressure is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue with texts by artist Paul Becker and art historian Dr Kate Antosik-Parsons. The F.E. McWilliam Gallery has also commissioned film-maker Éanna Mac Cana, Sharon’s son, to make a short film about the artist and her art.

The exhibition continues until the 28th May 2022 and is free to view. Visit https://visitarmagh.com/news/sharon-kelly-resting-pressure/

Dani Larkin
Pipped by RTE Radio 1, BBC Radio 2, Double J (Australia) and Folk Radio UK as a rising star on the Irish folk and alternative scene, 2021 was a breakthrough year for emerging alt-folk artist Dani Larkin, with the release of her debut album ‘Notes For A Maiden Warrior’.

Nominated for ‘Best Album’ at the Northern Ireland Music Prize, and 'Best Emerging Artist' at RTE Folk Awards, Dani Larkin has been an artist picking up speed with each release, and one that has been making her mark on the industry. Dani is also currently one of 35 UK artists receiving support through the PRS International Showcase Fund to perform at SXSW festival in Austin, Texas USA from 14 March 2022, supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

With appearances at The Great Escape, Doolin Folk fest, Folk Alliance, and selected to open for Snow Patrol to sold-out venues at London's Palladium Theatre, the Waterfront Hall in Belfast, as well as a special home show for Hot House Flowers - she is a live act not to be missed.

Dani is an artist renowned for her unforgettable live performances, her vocal takes centre stage, accompanied always by her impressive guitar and banjo playing. Larkin has the ability to blend the old and new perfectly through her songwriting, delicately weaving themes of Celtic folklore with the more modern day landscape of her own experiences. Watch out this Thursday for Dani’s brand new EP release with Ulster Orchestra, and catch her at the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival on 29 April 2022 https://cqaf.com/dani-larkin

Visit www.danilarkin.com

Helena Hamilton
Helena Hamilton is a visual/sound artist based in Belfast who works both visually and sonically, creating work which crosses the lines between object, sound, digital interaction and action/performance. She draws on aesthetics of simplicity - and this is expressed in minimalist forms in her work. Influenced by sonic compositional techniques such as phasing and repetition, Hamilton explores the visual through the sonic and vice versa. Exhibited media include sculpture, installation, drawing, new media, performance and sound.

Helena is based at Flax Studios Belfast. She has exhibited and performed in both gallery spaces and contemporary music/sound festivals across UK & Ireland as well as Berlin, Rome, Tokyo and New York. She received an MA in Sonic Arts (Queens University Belfast, 2014) and holds a BA Honours degree in Fine Art (University of Ulster, 2009).

Recent solo exhibitions include: Perceptions, The Angency Gallery, London (2020); Semblance and Event, Millennium Court Arts Centre, NI (2018). Showcases include: Digital Design Weekend, Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2017). Artist residencies include: Art Centre Ongoing, Tokyo, Japan (2016); Goldsmiths University of London, EAVI Group (2015).

An exhibition of new work ‘Virtual Matter (Ambient)’ is currently on show at The Naughton Gallery until 27 March. Visit www.helenahamilton.com