The Belfast Book Festival and the Crescent Arts Centre presented the world premiere of SacrumProfanum.

SacrumProfanum combines contemporary music, poetry, video installation and visual art, fieldwork reportage and innovative publication design in a large-scale multimedia performance and exhibition responding to the enigmatic sheela-na-gig stone carvings. Creative Directors Kimberly Campanello (poet) and Benjamin Dwyer (composer/guitarist) approach the sheela-na-gigs through an aesthetics of damage, excavation and assemblage, drawing upon ‘found’ text, visuals and music to evoke the carvings’ potential meanings. They have brought together an innovative and dynamic team of some of the finest musicians and artists working today in order to profoundly engage with themes of identity, politics, (post)colonialism, feminism and ritual.

SacrumProfanum (mixed ensemble and installation)
Creative Director, Composer, Guitar: Benjamin Dwyer
Creative Director, Poet, Viola: Kimberly Campanello
Video Artist: Dylan Griffith
Viola: Garth Knox
Soprano: Sylvia O’Brien
Percussion: Alex Petcu
Sean-nós singer: Áine Ní Dhroighneáin
Uilleann pipes: Donnacha Dwyer
Translator: Aifric Mac Aodha

Exhibition
The SacrumProfanum exhibition ran at the Crescent Arts Centre Gallery from June 9-23 and includes video and photographic installations, original manuscript scores, imagines (the complete set of limited edition lithograph books of Benjamin Dwyer’s scores for solo viola and four of Kimberly Campanello’s poems published by New Dublin Press) and fieldwork photographs and sketches of the sheela-na-gigs.