Window Texts: Offering

Offering continues our series of window text commissions by artists, writers, and designers. Ten artists/writers were invited to create one page of text – a completely open brief. The texts range from dense, deeply personal accounts to bold slogans, each capturing the different thoughts and feelings of the author. The texts have been designed by different artists and designers and printed in a risograph edition by Derry Print Workshop.

The texts are visible from CCA's windows, each for two weeks, as well as visible online here and distributed across our region. All ten will be available later in the year as a bundle edition available to buy from CCA's shop as a fundraiser.

Offering
Author: Leah Hickey
Designer: Aoife Cawley
Printer: Derry Print Workshop
Risograph edition of 200

About the author & designer:

Leah Hickey is an artist led by heartache. Hickey uses English Romantic poetry and auto-fiction as a starting point for rhythmic verse, typographic painting and gravestones. The artist's work is influenced by classical American cinematography, performative femininity, and Christian and Druidic ritual surrounding death.

Leah currently produces Emotional Outbursts, a 'part-fact, part-fiction otherworld of love letters' that merges free verse poetry and Early Modern English language with contextual research, which manifested in print form in 2023. Leah also co-directs Prayer Room, an artist-led gallery in Birmingham, UK, and recently founded Tentative Press.

leahhickey.com | @leahrhickey

Aoife Cawley is a printmaker and textiles artist from Kildare, Ireland. She graduated in 2024 from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee with a BA (Hons) in Contemporary Art Practice. Cawley’s work is centered around stories and people from folklore and mythology, hagiographical and historical contexts. These stories or figures are commemorated through the mediums of printmaking and embroidered textiles. She draws inspiration from the past, looking back to the Irish Arts and Craft Movement and the Celtic Revival, and uses similar mediums and references to create her work.

Aoife said of this project,

'Offering' by Leah Hickey was a beautiful piece of writing to illustrate. It was full of rich imagery that provided me with a lot of material to go off of. The image of the magpies stood out to me and made me think of the folklore rhyme 'one for sorrow, two for joy'. I included two magpies in this illustration, one perched upon a branch which looks out to the other magpie taking flight. I positioned the two birds this way to represent the sorrow, grief, longing, and loss portrayed in the text.

aoifecawleyart.com | @aoifecawleyart

This project was made possible thanks to support from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Derry City & Strabane District Council and Art Fund.