Deirdre Southey
Deirdre Southey is an artist based in the Southeast of Ireland whose practice explores the sacred dimensions of sound, ecology, and place. Her work arises from deep listening and meditative walking along the River Barrow—a river that shaped her childhood, where her garden was once an island within its waters.
Drawing on ancient Irish myth, environmental awareness, and contemporary art practices, Southey creates works that invite audiences to reconnect with the living presence of the natural world. Her approach emerges from a belief that place carries memory and that rivers, in particular, hold an otherworldly resonance—bridging physical landscape with the mythic and psychic realms found in Irish folk tradition. Through sound, video, and installation, her practice reflects on our relationship with the environment and all who inhabit it, offering moments of stillness, reflection, and sensory immersion.
You can follow the artist on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/didge2111/
Affiliation: Independent Artist
Berba’s Reverie is a meditative sound and video work dedicated to Berba, the ancient and forgotten goddess of the River Barrow, in Ireland. The piece emerged from a deep, evolving relationship with the river's ecosystem, inviting viewers into a sacred space of stillness and spiritual connection.
The work visualises the living presence of the goddess by transforming sound recordings gathered along the Barrow into light-infused movement. Through a unique alchemical process involving river water, local honey, and gold, these gathered sounds are translated into glowing, organic circular forms. These visuals evoke otherworldly spirits, recalling ancient Irish reverence for river and sun deities and their sacred links to the Otherworld.
By making the auditory landscape visible, the piece explores the unseen threads that bind human, earthly, and cosmic energies together. In an era of ecological crisis, Berba’s Reverie proposes a way of being grounded in care, reverence, and deep listening to the land. It offers an immersive experience that seeks to reconnect the viewer with the river’s enduring vitality, suggesting that the goddess is not truly forgotten, but waiting to be heard through the water.