Participation in the expanded cinema experience on the opening night of With Their Backs to the Sky. Friday, September 19, 2025.
Culture Night, Sligo 2025
Image Framers invites you to the opening of With Their Backs to the Sky, a collaborative expanded film by Erik Nuding, co-created with bat catchers, scientists and artists in Madagascar. Responding to Erik’s themes of ecology and culture, we invited rural artists to exhibit adjacent to the film. Marita O’Hanlon is a visual artist interested in rugged landscape and the cycles of change in nature. Nadia Tamerji is a multidisciplinary artist who is concerned with the idea of skin. Departures music trio, an experimental electronic group using feedback loops and distorted guitar riffs will close our evening.
Metalbox ag óstáil oíche le scannán leathnaithe, ealaín amhairc agus ceol beo turgnamhach. Beidh an scannán comhoibritheach With Their Backs to the Sky le Erik Nuding le feiceáil, in éineacht le saothair ó Marita O’Hanlon, Nadia Tamerji agus ceol beo ó Departures ag deireadh na hócáide.
Erik Nuding – Director & Co-DP
Erik is a UK/American filmmaker who grew up between London and County Sligo, Ireland. At the intersection of slow cinema and sensory ethnography, his work draws attention to the interdependence of life across different species. His debut short film, “An Ornithologist’s Daughter”, screened at Visions du Réel, FidMarseille and DocsIreland among others. Erik has an MFA in Documentary Media from Northwestern and has a BA from the University of California, Berkeley.
Documentary website: withtheirbackstotheskyfilm.com
Instagram: @erik_nuding
Bat catchers in Madagascar climbing with their gear.
Departures Music Experimental performance group
The experimental music trio, comprising a guitarist, drummer and a synthesist, emerged in early 2024 as an avant-garde collective exploring the uncharted territories of sound in unconventional spaces including an airport departures lounge and a handbag factory.
What sets the trio apart is their dedication to challenging the norms of both their instruments and the spaces they perform in. The group’s music can be characterized as experimental, ambient, and often jarring, using feedback loops, synthesized textures, and distorted guitar riffs that evolve organically over time.
Instagram: @departures_music_strandhill
Paul (Drums) & Jan (Keyboards) exploring new sounds.
Marita O’Hanlon
Marita O’Hanlon is a visual artist based in Sligo, Ireland, and a graduate of the National College of art and design (NCAD) with a BA (Hons) in Education and Fine Art in 2023. Her painting practice explores emotional landscapes shaped by light, colour, and the shifting qualities of place.
Her recent work focuses on transitional states, examining surfaces that suggest both stability and fluctuation. Inspired by the rugged landscapes of the west of Ireland, Marita’s paintings invite viewers to engage with the rhythms of nature, offering quiet moments of celebration within its cycles of change.
Instagram: @marita_ohanlon_art
Natural Space Landscape. Oil paint on canvas. 152.5 x 91.5 cm.
Nadia Tamerji
Nadia Tamerji is an interdisciplinary Irish/Lebanese artist based in Sligo. She graduated from the Institute of Technology Sligo with a first class honours in Fine Art. Awarded Emerging Artist award by IT Sligo which included a solo exhibition in the Ballinglen Arts Foundation ‘insides out’ (2021). Nadia’s focus is on rituals, skin, fabric and latex.
Her work is informed by experimental printmaking. She does this by taking a specific part of the body to isolate and exaggerate it, particularly the skin. The interest in skin led her to develop research into how the contemporary grotesque may be used as a tool in today’s society.
Instagram: @tamerjinadia
Nadia Tamerji at the Institute of Technology, Sligo. Photo: James Connoll.