Sample-Studios Gallery
March 5 – April 18, 2026
The Lord Mayor’s Pavilion, Fitzgerald’s Park
Opening: March 5 , 17:00 -19:00
Biscuit Tin Nostalgia is a solo exhibition by visual artist Elize de Beer which showcases a new body of work created from archival exploration and response to the Liam Kenedy photographic archive housed within the UCC Special Collections Library.
Exploring an archive which documents the daily life of Corkonians from the 1930s through the 1980s offers a glimpse into recent lived memory and the history of Cork. It is a history that is unfamiliar, without lived nostalgia and personal questions of belonging arising within the archive. From this unfamiliar ground de Beer forms a speculative nostalgic connectionto the material, an imagined connection to place and history shaped through landscape, photographic fragments, and archival traces.
As she did when arriving in Ireland, de Beer explored and navigated the archive by creating connections to the land; drawn to the landscapes and coastal areas to seek a sense of familiarity and belonging. As an outlier herself in a new space, she was drawn to the photographic mistakes, the edited negatives, and double exposures, which informed the visual language of the works. Using the archival materials, de Beer created a series of photo etchings, mixed media works and artist books. The body of work showcases elements of the collection and newly imagined at times dreamlike, landscapes.
de Beer’s research into the archive coincided with the rehousing of the collection, moving it from its original biscuit tin housing to protective preservation housing and fully cataloguing the collection. This archive, along with many like it, plays an important role in showcasing the history of a place and its people. Preservation of the archive allows that history to be remembered and explored. It also allows people without direct lived experience to explore the history of a place, gain new perspectives and find a deeper connection and sense of belonging to a space.
