Joanna Kidney: The Future has an Ancient Heart: Film Screening and a Conversation for All

Joanna Kidney: The Future has an Ancient Heart: Film Screening and a Conversation for All

About the film

Sshh, c’mere. We were once porous…

'The Future has an Ancient Heart’ invites you to attune to your animal body and its senses. To your relationship with the land. To the others we share it with. Step across the threshold into the otherworld. How can re-membering the interwovenness of life help us to live in right ecological relationship?

The screening of Joanna Kidney’s new short film will be followed by foraged refreshments and a conversation for all around the film’s themes. Poet Grace Wells will moderate and guest contributors will be author and activist Mary Reynolds; diviner and guide Colin Campbell and forager and multi disciplinary artist Samuel Arnold Keane.

’The Future has an Ancient Heart’ is funded by The Arts Council and supported by Wicklow County Arts Office through the annual Strategic Project Award Scheme. It is a collaboration with cinematographer Oisín Mc Farland Smith; film artist Alan Lambert and sound artist Anthony Kelly.

Joanna Kidney’s multidisciplinary practice considers what it means to be part of something much bigger than ourselves. Emerging from an animist worldview, it explores deep ecology, indigenous knowledge, wonder and care. Throughout her work with drawing, paint, space and moving image, the act of making and process are central.

In addition to exhibitions in the USA, UK, France and Germany, Joanna has had Solo Exhibitions in the RHA, Dublin; The LAB, Dublin; Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast; Uillinn and Galway Arts Centre. She is the recipient of a Cooper Foundation Grant (USA); Arts Council of Ireland funding, a DIT Award of Excellence and an RHA Studio Award. Her practice encompasses collaboration and working with artists collectives. She is the co-curator of Wicklow Artists Salon with writer Philip St John. Her work is held in Irish and International Public and Private Collections.

Grace Wells is an award-winning poet, environmental writer and poetry-film maker exploring ecology, spirit of place and human–Earth relationships. She works closely with Hometree, the landscape restoration charity working to restore Ireland’s endangered Atlantic rainforest. Through advocacy, poetry, film, and public engagement, she cultivates relational care and imaginative connection with the Living World.

Mary Reynolds is a reformed landscape designer, bestselling author, activist, speaker, writer, RTE Guide columnist and occasional television presenter. She is the founder of the global movement “We are the ARK – Acts of Restorative Kindness to the Earth”. Mary's mission is to decolonise our patches of this planet, patch by patch. It’s time to learn to share.

Colin Campbell is a diviner, teacher, and guide who weaves Jungian depth psychology, mythology, and Southern African cosmology. Initiated as a sangoma into the Fondo lineage in 2000, he facilitates transformational work on natural law and cross-cultural cosmology across Africa, the UK, and the Americas, inspiring people to reconnect with ancestral knowledge and the living world.

Samuel Arnold Keane is a forager and multidisciplinary artist... merging various art forms to tell the stories of the seaweeds, coasts and streets he gathers, wades and walks... At the essence of his creative practice is a passion for the natural world and to share this with others through song, performance, image and word.

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