A Spontaneous Cairn

On Saturday, 23 May from 2-5pm Ormston House will host A Spontaneous Cairn at the Record Room, Limerick. Join us for an informal afternoon event of moving image artworks and performative lectures. Admission is free and booking is not necessary.

These works were selected from an open call, originally issued in late 2025, inviting submissions for an artist to be included in the Limerick iteration of our touring exhibition, Memory of a Free Festival. We sought work that resonated with the thematics of this group exhibition: countercultural, DIY, and grassroots movements, art as activism, the case for/against nuclear power, festivals as sites of alternative social order and music as catalyst for social and political change.

The title is taken from a line in Orla Barry’s newly commissioned installation Kodak Moon; “we will lay these caring rocks in a spontaneous cairn”. This refers to a now legendary occurrence at the 1978 anti-nuclear festival in Carnsore Point, whereby attendees gathered stones to build a cairn.

This event includes contributions from Chloe Brenan, Mary Sue Connolly, Yvanna Greene, David Lawless, Martina O’Brien, Marie Phelan, and Deirdre Southey.

Organised by Ormston House with funding from the Arts Council of Ireland through the Touring of Work Scheme.