Oisín Roberts
Fool's Spring, 2022
Audio reading, 4 mins 45 sec

Part of the Northern Ireland Mental Health Arts Festival 2022.

Oisín Roberts is an artist and poet originally from our city and a recent graduate of the Slade School of Art in London. This new installation is centred around a new piece of writing entitled Fool’s Spring and consists of a bicycle rack, yellow light and poem installed in CCA's Project Space and the poem is available to download in this podcast.

The title of the long form poem comes from the nick name of a fake season, naming the week of warmth that comes after winter and before ‘second winter’. It is, for the artist, a false start, a brief and urgent movement between periods of stagnancy. Oisín is interested in repeating fleeting human interventions in their environment, whether seeing a person absent-mindedly moving something from one place to another, noticing a sticker stuck on the side of a wall, or screen-shotting the bike ebay ad when noticing a butterfly on the frame.

Oisín writes referencing the tone of the New Narrative movement way of writing poetry, creating auto-fiction texts that sound like they could be talking about their life, but the content comes from a wide range of sources. Adopting the idea that all sources are as valid as the other, Oisín practices a way of making in which no hierarchy exists.

Fool’s Spring is on view in the CCA Project Space for the duration of the Northern Ireland Mental Health Festival from Monday 9–Sunday 15 May 2022.

About the artist

Oisín Roberts (b.1994) is originally from Derry~Londonderry. They moved to London to study at The Slade School of Fine Art, graduating in 2018. A Pisces, a poet and an artist - they went on to read in public and exhibit sculptures, now scattered across various defunked and hard to find web-links. Their current exhibitions include, catch Fast Glass, a group photography exhibition at Set New Cross, 15–16 April, Carpeted Stares, a group show in AMP Gallery 15–19 June and 07803178250/07531313883, a two person show with Lowri Heckler at Set New Cross 2–9 August.

Read more about the work at: CCADLD.org/public-programmes/fools-spring
And visit the artist's instagram at: @oisin.roberts

This project was supported by:

CCA Derry~Londonderry Arts Council England Arts Council of Northern Ireland Derry City & Strabane District Council Northern Ireland Mental Health Festival