Mirage spotted on Cork quay
An exhibition featuring ambitious new works by studio members at Cork city’s Backwater Artists Group will open today.
‘Arranged Mirage’ is a collaborative exhibition by artists Amna Walayat and Tina Whelan which explores feminism across the intersecting terrains of religion, culture, myth, and social norms.
Opening today, Thursday, at Studio 12, Backwater Artists Group on Wandesford Quay, the exhibition will run until 27 June, opening from 10am-5pm Tuesday to Friday. The exhibition marks Walayat and Whelan’s second collaboration and follows their exhibition ‘Songs from a Lost Paradise’ in 2024.
Over the past two years, shared dialogue has informed their use of materials, methods, and a symbolic language, which is rooted in their contrasting cultural backgrounds. Throughout their collaborations, Walayat and Whelan celebrate both their differences and their togetherness.
Tina Whelan is an Irish visual artist, researcher, and storyteller. She studied at Belfast School of Art and MTU Crawford College of Art & Design. In 2021, she graduated with a Research Masters on the impact of national ideology and Catholic ethics on Irish obstetrics.
Taking the maternal body as her starting point, Whelan draws on her lived experience of the evolving relationship between religion and women in Irish society. In this new exhibition, she explores womanhood through devotional imagery, celebrating the transformative act of birth as a creative and sacred force.
Amna Walayat is a Cork-based visual artist of Pakistani origin who works from Backwater Artists Studio and is also a member of Sample-Studios and Art Nomads. Her work has been shown at EVA International, IMMA, RHA, The Dock, Sirius Arts Centre, and in major venues in Pakistan. She holds an MA in Art History from UCC and an MA in Fine Arts from Punjab University.
The search for a lost paradise is a recurring theme in Walayat’s practice as she connects memory, identity, and the complexities of belonging. Symbolism and motifs of traditional Indo-Persian painting remain central to her work, whilst she evolves her technical approach, and she experiments with colour and material processes. With these developments, she deepens her engagement with feminist discourse and personal storytelling.
‘Arranged Mirage’ invites viewers to reflect on concepts of faith, hope, and belonging, on how these concepts have been shaped by evolving religious, cultural, and secular beliefs, and how we might experience them in the present. With this vision, difference becomes a source of strength, and the mirage, once elusive, transforms into a site of real possibilities.