Oil on canvas board or stretched canvas, or watercolour and pen.
2009 – 2019.
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Paperdolls
Paperdolls @ Dublin Fringe Festival, The Complex, Dublin 7. September 2011.
For this project I designed and produced of a number of bespoke aerial performer costumes, including a textured black coat which came apart in 7 pieces (slowly removed on stage), a 2-piece appliquéd pole dancing outfit, a yellow leotard with ruffle skirt and cascading ruffle details and a lampshade dress with inset led-lights.
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Fabric Commissions
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Dissolving Text
Interactive floor installation and three looped video pieces.
This is not Therapy, IADT Dun Laoghaire, Dublin. May 2007.
Videos exhibited at the RDS Student Art Awards Exhibition, Royal Dublin Society, Dublin 4 in August 2007.
People look at things constantly; they quickly decode meaning, ponder about significance, and then move on. Time for appreciation of visual form, of shapes, colour, light and texture is rare. Text is one thing in particular, so wrought with meaning that people immediately read, yet never really look. This piece disrupts the use of text for meaning, allowing it to be plainly observed for its form and patterns. The interactive floor piece was written directly onto the wooden floor using blocks of plaster; as the audience walk over the piece it slowly gets rubbed away, leaving only elements of the textual forms behind. The text is distorted by scale and time, the futility of reading eventually becomes clear to the viewer and they are freed to simply observe. The video pieces draw on the same idea; the text dissolving and re-emerging continually in hypnotic loops, willing the viewer to stop thinking and just see.
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Treasure Hunt
Live art hunt and mounted photographs.
Exit, Pursued by a Bear, Broadstone Studios, Dublin 7. April 2009.
With this piece the audience used the special maps on their exhibition invitations or flyers to locate the gallery. Along the way there are hidden scenes for the viewer to discover, turning this normally mundane task into an adventure and showing that enchantment can be found even where it is least expected. The intent is that the viewer’s imagination is stimulated so that they will go on to envisage their own little hidden worlds, and become more aware of beauty in their daily lives.
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Cardboard Curiosities
Mixed media installation.
Mart: Open Door Policy, Galway Arts Festival. July 2009.
The intent of this piece is to induce three forms of delight. Firstly, the simple aesthetic quality of the interconnecting sculptural forms and the play of light and shadow innately please the human eye. Secondly, on further investigation the viewer is rewarded by an interior dimension to the work; a realm of concealed curiosities which lie within, waiting to be discovered. The objective is that the investigation of these undisclosed worlds induces a sense of childlike excitement and that the viewer’s imagination is stimulated into attaining the third and most extensive of all the joys, the capability to envisage their own miniature scenes hidden throughout their daily lives, in turn stimulating an active imagination and an increased awareness of the uncontrollable beauty by which we are surrounded.
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The Good Shit
Interactive video installation.
Kaleidoscope, IADT Dun Laoghaire, Dublin. October 2009.
This piece centres on the answers to a question posed to the public (via a blog page and collection boxes) regarding the seemingly insignificant pleasures which we experience every day; the little enjoyable moments of life, which often go overlooked. The aim is to create a volume of uplifting information which counteracts the mass of bleak data by which we are bombarded daily.
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Room
Mixed media installation.
Part of solo show Streakers at The Joinery, Dublin 7 in April 2011 and IADT Graduate Degree Show in June 2010.
My practice at the time centred on audience participation and contemporary cultural mindsets; I created mundane situations and injected them with flashes of light-hearted humour and diversion, focusing on ideas of play, imagination and exploration.
Library piece sold to the Guinness Storehouse, June 2011.
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Art Holes
The Artellectual Correlation Game
MART @ Twisted Pepper (part of The Beatyard Weekender), Dublin. October 2010.
Game components include balls with various icons/symbols and the art holes table, which has holes labelled with art terms (artists, movements etc.).
Players are given three balls and asked to match the symbols on the balls with the correct hole on the table. On getting all three balls in the right holes, the player is rewarded with a unique Art Holes goody bag (includes light refracting glasses, candy necklace, balloon with art fortune, ‘make art not bollocks’ pencil and an art holes badge).
This performative, interactive piece deals with art world pretensions about the level of knowledge needed to understand most contemporary art. Much of the work of today’s artists chiefly addresses art world insiders; those who recognize how art practices function in reference to the work of other artists, resulting in art which is largely obscure to audiences who don’t possess this specific art knowledge. Art Holes is a reaction to this; parodying these pretensions and highlighting the relative absurdity that accompanies contemporary art speak.
Artists or art world insiders playing the game will mull over the range of associations between the symbols and the art terms, whereas the “outsiders” are likely to randomly choose where the balls go, quickly realising that they don’t know the answers. But just as there are no right answers in art, there are no right answers in Art Holes; the symbols and art terms are completely arbitrary and any connections drawn are merely coincidental. Anyone who plays wins. Lengthy discussions about the various ball/hole links are, like most bloated art world conversations, completely pointless.
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Streakers
Interactive video installation.
Part of solo show Streakers at The Joinery, Dublin 7. April 2011.
My practice at the time centred on audience participation and contemporary cultural mindsets; I created mundane situations and injected them with flashes of light-hearted humour and diversion, focusing on ideas of play, imagination and exploration.