Overdosing on news?

If you’re battling an addiction to Covid-19 shock story scrolling this week, you’re not alone.

While it’s important to keep up to date with what’s going on, everybody from the Taoiseach to your local yoga guru is advising that taking a break from social media is vital for maintaining good mental health right now.

With this in mind, Bloomers Magazine and Collective have produced just the escape we were looking for.

The multichannel arts organisation, which celebrates emerging female artists based in Ireland, has released a Digital Collection featuring all four issues so far for the bargain price of a tenner.

“Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, museums and galleries all over the world have closed and events have been cancelled.” Bloomers Director Enid Conway told Yay Cork.

“As a response to this Bloomers would like to announce the release of a complete digital collection of all issues of Bloomers Magazine. It is a digital collection of all issues of Bloomers Magazine released to date which features work made by some of the most exciting emerging female visual artists based in Ireland in each curated, theme-specific issue – with written reviews, interviews, poetry and creative responses from innovative Irish writers.”

Bloomers features a considerable number of emerging female artists based in Cork including Deirdre Breen, Holly Walsh, Sarah Long, Annie Forrester, Emma O’Hara and Elaine Howley (The Altered Hours).

“All of our issues tend to sell out quite fast so this is a great opportunity for people to get their hands on what they might have missed,” added Enid.

The Bloomers Digital Anthology (€10, available here) includes: 

Issue 01: Illustration
Irish women reconcile with a culture historically oppressive to the female spirit and conjure ideas that are intimate and interrogative. Informed by the past, these Irish female emerging Illustrators draw a map of the future.

Issue 02: The Living Mountain
Issue 02 is a collection of essays, interviews, reviews and other texts about the work of several emerging female artists who are exploring landscape, environment, physical space or psychic space in their work.

(This issue sold out twice when it was released)

Issue 03: Shape Histories
Shape Histories is a collection of speculative fiction written in response to work by artists, Deirdre Breen, Robyn Carey, Gráinne Nagle and Sophia Vigne – artists who are producing work that is abstract, geometric and bold.

Issue 04 : Out of Body
‘Out of Body’ is a curated collection of visual art and texts that discuss responses to the body and space by emerging female artists based in Ireland. From psychogeography, corporeal awareness, the voice and architecture, this issue explores many themes in a range of media including painting, performance, photography and video.