Renowned Beara artist Rachel Parry brings her evocative Kelp Cailleach to this year’s festival. In this reinterpretation of Paula Rego’s iconic Avenging Angel (1998) Parry has made a dress from kelp washed up on the shores of Beara. Rego’s sword and sponge have been replaced with black-backed gull wings. The materials used in this piece bring us into a timely ecological conversation. They are worn and held by the Cailleach – a pre-Christian mythological figure associated with Beara, where in Kilcatherine she leaped across the bay and turned herself into rock to outwit the control of the patriarchal church. Often depicted as an old woman, the Cailleach is a symbol of endurance and transformation. Parry’s Kelp Cailleach is a call to action. Positioned between sculpture and performance, it invites audiences into a space where ancient stories, feminist iconography, and contemporary ecological concerns converge – powerfully, quietly, insistently.