The Valentia Slate Bench, currently presented as part of Fionn McCann’s Deconstructing a Mountain at the RHA Ashford Gallery, sits within an exhibition developed through four years of photography at Valentia Slate Quarry, connecting material, landscape, labour and making.
Developed over several years through research, prototyping and rigorous structural testing, the bench explores the exceptional compressive strength of Valentia Slate while retaining an incredibly slender, seemingly simple silhouette.
This conversation will introduce a series of topics around the bench and a discussion from the perspectives of design, geology and engineering.
Edwyn James Hickey Edwyn James Hickey is an Irish designer whose work explores the relationship between geology, engineering and architecture. He graduated in Architecture from TU Dublin and is a recipient of the AAI Maurice Craig Award. He has worked with leading architectural practices in Ireland and the UK, before founding Magnaparte and Edwyn James.
His work has been exhibited internationally, including Maison&Objet and Révélations at the Grand Palais in Paris, Collect London, and he was a recipient of the Design & Crafts Council Ireland Future Makers Award in 2024. Edwyn has worked closely with Valentia Slate, Dr Aidan Forde and Peter Flynn pioneering new applications for the historic Irish material and pushing its structural and architectural capabilities through design, engineering and experimentation. His recent work includes the Valentia Chair and the post-tensioned Valentia Slate bench currently exhibited at the RHA. Edwyn is represented by Róisín Lafferty Gallery.
Alongside his design and visual studios, Edwyn is currently completing his RIAI Part 3 and is leading the design of Ireland’s first purpose-designed ISKCON temple.
Dr Aidan Forde Aidan is a geologist who attended TCD as an undergraduate and James Cook University in Australia for his PhD. He subsequently worked as a post-doctoral researcher in structural geology, lectured in TCD and founded the Killarney National Park Education Centre. In the early 1990s he transitioned to renewable energy and was involved in large wind farm developments, both onshore and offshore, in Ireland. Aidan is also involved in whisky distilling, expedition yacht design and operation, house building, conservation of historic structures and quarrying of heritage dimension stone at Valentia Slate. He enjoys mountain sports, judo and ultramarathons and is a director of Kerry Mountain Rescue Team. He lives in Killarney with his family.
Peter Flynn Peter Flynn has worked across many areas of multidisciplinary engineering, including structural design, façade design and low-energy building design. He lectured for over 27 years in materials at Trinity College Dublin and has worked with artists including Joseph Walsh and Edwyn James Hickey, supporting their vision through engineering and collaboration. His projects include the Grand Canal Theatre, AIB Bank Centre and the structural design of Joseph Walsh’s Magnus Modus at the National Gallery of Ireland. After 36 technical years, Peter has entered a new phase of life creating drawings, ceramics and bronze sculpture, exhibiting at the RHA Annual Exhibition in 2022. He continues to collaborate with artists and companies, including Valentia Slate in a technical advisory capacity.
