2010-2012 Exhibitions

November 2012—Very busy!  Have just sent a small work to the Museum of Biblical Art in Dallas, Texas, upon their request to help out a fundraiser.  It is a small version of Belief–And I am preparing the Wound Series for exhibition in China in 2013 in IrishWave and then to the Shanghai Art Fair.  Meanwhile I am working hard on an essay for a new IBook organised by Alice Kettle, textiles artist.  We have met several times and always seem to find close connections in our attitudes toward making.  She has asked me to write on making—and I have chosen to focus on making as a spiritual practice.  The book will be published in 2013!

May 2012—YCC Gallery in Beijing have selected all three of my artworks currently in China for further exhibition and touring in China during 2012!

April 2012–My work is opening this month in Lithuania in a special exhibition of Small Size Works organised by Asia-Europe Fiber Art.  They are active in building links between European and Asian artists.  I have sent a new work in paper, Litany, that uses text in the form of all the chronological list of Irish saints spiralling into a vessel.  Images of this new work can be seen under Current Work–New Directions.  I hope to be selected as a member of this exhibiting group for future projects.

March 2012–I am travelling to Shanghai 15-22 March with my Institute to develop links with an Art College in Hangzhou.   We will set up an exciting exchange through textiles.  I am so excited on behalf of my excellent students!  I will also be able to attend the opening of Telling Tales at the Irish Centre, Shanghai.

January 2012–My work has been selected for a range of shows in China as part of IrishWave 3! I will be in:  Instruments of Pleasure at the National Centre for the Performing Arts, Beijing;    Beijing;  Hidden Meanings, at the Yan Chao Collection Gallery, Beijing, and Telling Tales at the Irish Centre Shanghai

July 2011–I am making plans for an upcoming visit to Kaunas, Lithuania, to take part in the European Textiles Network Conference and the Kaunas International Biennial of Textiles, held together in September this year.  I am taking the work of 6 of my recent Year 3 students of the Crawford College of Art and Design in Cork for a special exhibition sponsored by TEXERE (Textile Education and Research in Europe)  of which I have been a member for many years.  I will also exhibit one of my own artworks in Kaunas, and speak to the ETN Assembly as part of a special session on Networking and Exchange.  I will highlight the textiles and exchange and outreach programmes at the Crawford.  I can’t wait for this intensive immersion in textiles culture!!!  I am so grateful to the Institute for sponsoring me through Erasmus funding!

May 2011:  My work will be featured in a new book published this month, FIBER ART TODAY, by Carol Russell; Schiffer Publishing in the U.S., available soon through Amazon. 

April 2011:  I am exhibiting new work, Belief (See Current work/new directions page) in Perceptions of Craft in Contemporary Fine Art, curated by Nuala O’Donovan for the Lavit Gallery, Cork, until 30 April.  In this work I am staining through stitching with acrylic on paper. . . .in this show I am also exhibiting Halo and Grace, works in glass/wire and gold leaf construction (can be seen in International exhibitions section of this site).

RE the Venice Biennale:  unfortunately Arte & Arte have funding difficulties and must postpone their involvement until the next Biennale.  But having been accepted as a Collateral Event they now know much more about the complex application and funding requirements. . . .I am excited to have been selected, and I am keeping in close contact with this ambitious organisation regarding a possible educational project. . .

October 2010:  Exciting news!  I have been invited by the Arte & Arte Association of Como, Italy, to exhibit in their collateral exhibition within the next Venice Biennale!  More news as this develops!

I am currently exhibiting a miniature piece in an exhibition entitled Genus Loci, organised by the Slovakian Artists Union,  in Galeria X, Bratislava, to which I have been invited to submit.  To talk about the spirit of Ireland I am using fragments of natural slate from my garden here in Kinsale, creating a circular island form within clear glass.  Images of this work, Heart of Ireland, can be found under Work: International Exhibits.

I was recently honoured to have been invited by the Japanese textile artist Asako Ishizaki to exhibit with her in Tokyo in  February/March 2010.  This exhibition, Session, curated by Sugane Hara,  paired 15 Japanese artists with selected international artists in sharing ideas, exploring creative methodology, in the development of  our work for this show.   Asako and I  have therefore come through a period of correspondence and image exchange, particularly in reference to our respective spiritual ethos and how this is reflected in our art practice.  We find that both of us struggle to embody the divine essence of nature, of matter, in our manipulation of glass, metal, paper, and fibre.  You can see an image of my work, Grace,  in Work: International Exhibits in this site.  (March 2011:  please pray for Sugane and her family and friends of Tokyo who are safe but bearing the worries of their nation in the aftermath of earthquake and tsunami!)

Click here for full details of past and upcoming exhibitions >

Report on the 17th International Textile Symposium, Graz, Austria 2001

by Pamela Hardesty
Article for TEXERE newsletter

I was a very fortunate participant in this event, held at the Bildungszentrum Raiffeisenhof in Graz from 9-13 July of this year. I represented Ireland within a group of 12 textile artists spanning a wide range of disciplines, cultures, stages of career. It was a very successful event on many levels, with a high standard of organisation and representation.

‘Spirituality and Culture’ Speech given at Irish Interchurch Conference, Cork, 6 May 2005

I am truly very honoured to be invited to speak here today. I received the booklet of papers from your Working Party, and as a layperson, a parishioner, I have been inspired and heartened to know that this kind of shared dialogue is underway here in Ireland. I also wondered what I could contribute to such a thorough examination of spirituality and culture. I am just a maker, an artist. I express my insights through form, colour, material. But you have brought your gathering here to Cork to take part in our celebration as European City of Culture, and Cork’s theme for this honour is ‘The City of Making’. So I can contribute my personal path as a maker, in what I see as my vocation as an artist, how this path has nourished my faith, and how I have worked to bring my insights as an artist into projects in my local parish—- and how I can envision further alliances between the artistic, creative activity of our culture and the living Church.

Pamela Hardesty at the Fenton Gallery by Mark Patrick Hederman

Preliminary thoughts on Pamela Hardesty’s exhibition in the Fenton Gallery, Cork. 5 December 2002

Click here for images from the Fenton Gallery exhibition

Pamela’s ‘The Water and the Blood’ exhibition is in the stone-walled, barrel-vaulted space, entered through a narrow awning. The titles nearly put me off: Christ’s Passion, the Water and the Blood, The Sacred Heart! However her focus is on the role of the physical in spiritual transcendence; how the body can be vehicle for the Spirit. ‘Complex, dense, structural compositions, using glass and stone units linked by wire’. Impressive = sacred hearts and stations in abstract textures like flesh. Using the softer, more skin-like surface of paper, she depicts abuse – cutting, piercing, peeling, and the effect is startling.

The Water and the Blood: Christ’s Passion exhibition catalogue

by Pamela Hardesty
Fenton gallery, Cork 16 Nov – 7 Dec 2002

Click here to view the work

This body of work arose out of an interest in the physicality of spirit, the role of the body in spiritual progress and transformation. This interest came out of my own struggles to understand my faith in relation to the sacramental life of Catholicism, and also out of my own developing awareness of my humanity, my physical self and its relationship to the Divine through the practice of prayer and my life in Christ.

‘A Language of Faith: from Paper to Glass’ TEXERE Conference Lisbon 2002

Speaker: Pamela Hardesty

In 1986 I moved from the U.S. to Ireland in the hope of finding a simpler way of life, hopefully in a society more attuned to spiritual exploration, more appreciative of the poetic and the immaterial. I have settled in Ireland to teach and work, developing my artistic vocabulary through a wide range of materials and processes, all united by a textiles sensibility and an effort to articulate through form my evolving Christian faith.

‘Ready for the Stars’ Michael Longley on the Paradiso exhibition

Michael Longley, poet in residence at Trinity College Dublin, opened Pamela Hardesty’s exhibition ‘Dante’s Paradiso’at the Pantheon Gallery, Dublin, 7 April 1993. The exhibition was part of Festa Italiana.

Click here to see images of the work

One of the reasons great works of art survive, or, rather, persist, is because they are quarries for other works of art. A great work brims with possibilities for the artists who come after it. Think of the thousands of poems and pictures inspired over the centuries by Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. My own most recent collection of poems ended up as a belated lament for my parents. But my emotions had found no embodiment until I re-read in the Odyssey Homer’s account of Odysseus’ re-union with his failing father Laertes and, in Hades, with his dead mother Anticleia. Words many hundreds of years old illuminated my sorrow.

Paradiso exhibition catalogue 1993

Click here to view the works from the Paradiso exhibition

Pamela Hardesty:

Dante’s Paradiso, completed in 1321, is the third and final part of The Divine Comedy. The poem is a description of his journey through the many spheres of heaven towards the abode of God, and this journey serves as a long progress toward spiritual understanding.

My previous work in paper dealt with texture and landscape, and metaphor of a spiritual intent. In The Paradiso I found a challenging and masterful metaphor for spiritual realisation. I was attracted by the magnificent geometric structure which gave clarity to its beautiful imagery of affirmation and joy. I set about trying to give form to this imagery, hoping that the power of Dante’s vision would thereby reveal itself.