EGS - Three Letters, Three Wells
‘Three Letters, Three Wells – A Pilgrimage in Glass’ premieres at Design & Crafts Council Ireland’s Irish Design Week 2025
E-G-S and K-A-J. Three letters, two artists, different decades.
Finnish graffiti and contemporary artist EGS presents a new exhibition, Three Letters, Three Wells – A Pilgrimage in Glass, which will premiere in Ireland in November as part of Design & Crafts Council Ireland’s 4th Irish Design Week (17th - 21st November). The exhibition is inspired by the journey of Finnish design master Kaj Franck to Kilkenny, Ireland, in the early 1960s.
This autumn, EGS travelled to Kilkenny to trace Franck’s footsteps and explored what a dialogue between Finnish design and contemporary art might mean today. EGS describes the journey as one rooted in the possibility of getting lost, and in the exploration of detours and collaboration. The project was initiated and commissioned by the Finnish Institute in the UK and Ireland, in collaboration with Design & Crafts Council Ireland.
Blending graffiti, glass sculpture, storytelling and sacred sites, the project reimagines what a design pilgrimage might look like today. The exhibition explores how two seemingly separate traditions, graffiti and craft, share deep connections through skill, patience and trust.
Working alongside photographer Marko Rantanen and glassblower Rory Leadbetter of Jerpoint Glass, EGS visited three holy wells in Kilkenny: St. Moling’s, Kenny’s, and St. Augustine’s, using each as inspiration for a unique glass vessel. Created with Finnish birch ash, the works hold water from the wells, becoming containers of memory, mythology and movement.
“Travelling has always been central to my practice. As a graffiti writer, I learned to navigate through letters and movement. For this project, I wanted to create a new kind of map—one drawn in glass, air, and light,” EGS says.
The resulting installation combines glass works, drawings, photographs, film and a zine, forming an archive of collaboration between land, craft and contemporary art. The sculptures are not functional in the usual sense, though they do hold water drawn from the holy wells. “They are containers for memory, mythology, and movement—three letters in another language,” EGS concludes.
Text: Finnish Institute in the UK and Ireland
My approach to this project was entirely black and white, since we were following in the footsteps of Kaj Franck, who worked with glass in Ireland 60 years ago. And just as EGS paints three letters, I chose to work with three different cameras: a Pentax half-frame, a 35mm SLR, and a 4×5” field camera. All with roughly 40mm equivalent lenses. For the field camera, I also made a pinhole lens, thinking it would suit the atmosphere of foggy Ireland. One advantage of the half-frame camera was its zone-focus system, which guarantees beautifully unpredictable results — plus it has a tiny built-in flash.
I used ISO 400 film, which I developed in Rodinal using semi-stand development — something unusual for me. I wanted to emphasize grain and excessive contrast.
The video has been edited to resemble a zine rather than a traditional chronological documentary.
