It’s a drizzly Sunday morning. Down by the Ballydehob community hall, cars and trailers gather. Boots opening like clamshells. On display, today’s treasures: rusty garden tools, floral china sets, children’s books softening in the damp air. From second-hand to freshly baked, much is to be found on the trestle tables sprawling by the riverside. The car boot sale in West Cork is a tradition with many possible origins. A Catholic priest from Stockport is said to have introduced it to the UK as a charity fundraiser after seeing a similar ‘trunk fair’ in Canada in the early 1970s. Others would claim it is really the descendant of the fair day — lá aonaigh. Markets and fairs in Ireland carry the memory of the aonach (fair) of the native Irish tradition and the margadh (market), a loanword from the Vikings. Aonach derives from óen, ‘one’. Hence, the fair is a coming-into-one, a gathering. The fair day is where news from the next parish spreads, where matches are made, and where disputes are quietly resolved.

It was to this ritual that Susanne Bürner, Ines Kaag, Annette Kelm, and Alexandra Leykauf kept returning during their residency in Glenkeen Garden, having arrived in the cool months and into near-constant rain. For ‘Sister Weather’, the group turns the Return Gallery at the Goethe-Institut into a car boot, against which the works lean and gather.

Opening
Fri., 18.9.26, 6 pm

Exhibition
Sat.,19.9.—Sat.,24.10.26

Artist Presentations
Sat., 19.9.26, 4 pm
Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen