Discarded fishing ropes that washed up on the North Connemara island of Turbot inspired artist Hanneke Frenkel’s latest project, weaving rugs from waste. She’s inviting people to the island during Clifden Arts Festival to see her work and explore Turbot, as she tells STEPHEN CORRIGAN.

For almost 30 years, Hanneke Frenkel and her husband, Stefan, have been spending their summers on Turbot Island, but it was during an extended stay there following the outbreak of Covid-19 that the seed for her ‘Sea Carpets’ project was planted.

Later this month, as part of the Clifden Arts Festival, the fruits of her labour will be on show as people are invited to visit Turbot, just off the Clifden coast, to see her work and tour the island which has been without a permanent population since 1981.

Hanneke’s Sea Carpets are made using the thousands of metres of fishing rope she has collected on Turbot over the past two-and-a-half years, after the extended lockdown of 2020 left her looking for a creative outlet, as she explains.

“When Corona arrived in March 2020, by coincidence we were on Turbot and we were planning just a short stay, but we thought we better not go back home just yet,” recalls Hanneke, who is from the Netherlands.

“As I was walking around the island, wondering what to do, I found a huge amount of black rope washed ashore and thought to myself, maybe there was something I could do with it. From that, I started making my first carpet, just for myself, and it all started from there.”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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