Inaugural SATELLITE Artist in Residence at Mayo Dark Sky Park announced
MAYO Dark Sky Park at Wild Nephin National Park, in partnership with UCD College of Science and Parity Studios, has announced artist Louise Beer as the inaugural SATELLITE Artist in Residence.
The announcement was made under the stars on the opening night of the Mayo Dark Sky Festival 2025, celebrating the beginning of a year-long collaboration between art, science, and the night sky.
Originally from Aotearoa, New Zealand, Louise explores humanity’s evolving relationship with Earth and the cosmos through installation, sound, photography, writing, and participatory practice. Her approach, which she calls *Celestial Immersion*, involves spending time beneath the stars - listening to the night’s soundscape and reflecting on our place within the vast rhythms of the universe.
During her residency, Louise will immerse herself in the dark skies, boglands and mountains of Mayo Dark Sky Park at Wild Nephin National Park - one of the last places in Europe where it is still possible to experience the night as it truly is: vast, ancient, and alive. Through night-time fieldwork, sound recording and photography, she will create new work that interlaces astronomical, geological and ecological timescales, tracing the delicate connections that link Earth’s deep-time past with its uncertain future.
Louise’s residency will also include a participatory project inviting local communities, UCD researchers, scientists, the dark sky team and park rangers to reflect on the night sky through writing, conversation and shared observation, deepening the connection between people, place, research and the rhythms of the natural world.
Louise added her thoughts on the appointment: “Mayo offers a uniquely dark, minimally light-polluted environment where we can still see Earth as a planetary landscape - without the common traces of modern humanity. Its geology, flora, fauna and expansive night sky provide an exceptional setting to study long-term geological, ecological and astronomical processes.
“The residency will allow me to reflect on the improbable sequence of events that made life possible, from the first moments of the universe, and how we can reframe how we understand the significance of the climate crisis.”
Denis Strong, divisional manager of the National Parks and Wildlife Service, added: “We are delighted to welcome Louise to Mayo Dark Sky Park at Wild Nephin National Park. Her residency will help us see this landscape - and its nightscape - through fresh eyes. We hope this collaboration will deepen the connection between our surrounding communities and the value of our dark skies as a source of conservation and culture.”
Emer O'Boyle, creative director of UCD Parity Studios, said: “We are delighted to welcome Louise Beer as the inaugural SATELLITE artist in residence. We are equally excited to embark on this new partnership with the National Parks and Wildlife Service and Mayo Dark Sky Park. It opens up a new and extraordinary opportunity for artists working at the intersection of research, art and ecology.”
The SATELLITE Residency programme offers artists a rare opportunity to work alongside scientists, rangers and researchers in one of the darkest and most pristine night-sky environments in the world. As Mayo Dark Sky Park approaches its 10-year anniversary as an International Dark Sky Park in 2026, Louise’s residency marks a milestone in how creativity and science come together to honour and protect the night.