ARTIST STATEMENT

My practice evolves from being in the world, from the ordinary mundane activities of the everyday, the global, capitalist, technological networks of labour and travel. I am interested in how we negotiate a space for an interior, imaginative world while while we simultaneously function as rational, efficient subjects in places of order and functionality. My practice seeks out the odd and often intriguing ways we find to dream while confined, and observes the curious & playful actions we take to resist conforming to the systems that surround us.

The work is usually intimate and quietly subversive, often focusing on the individual or the individual as part of a group. In 2005, paintings exhibited as part of my degree show (NCAD), such as Procession (2005), The Thinker (2005), or Man In Suit (2005) were the ‘cleaners’ of disaster areas, or the investigators of violent events informed by a constant stream of media images of men in forensic suits,. In 2007 ‘the man in the white suit’ appeared as ‘Globedreamer’ (2006) a 3min animation with a Puccini score, a small metaphor about the possibility of dreaming while confined, which was selected by Enrique Juncosa and Francis Morris for The Crawford Open 2007, ‘Sleep of Reason’, (Nov 2007-Feb 2008).

In 2007, The Waiting Drawings , a series of 5 large oil and conté drawings explored the possibilities of The Commuter as dreamer or subverter of the rational utopia’ of the travel network. (de Certeau:1984) and were exhibited at The Digital Hub (MA show). This year, TRUE STORIES OF PROTEST, a text based work was exhibited as part of SKART’s Private TALK - PUBlic Space for St. Peter’s Market , Cork (March/April 2009). A collection of five stories, personally observed, they tell of small acts of protest against a city ruled by efficiency, order, detachment and uniformity with the reader invited to pass on their own stories.

The Protestor is also a recurring persona, exploring the politics of resistance within the everyday. The Protestor Drawings, a series of 9 graphite drawings of small, solitary individuals in an expanse of white paper was inspired by a newspaper image from a residents’ protest on the streets of Limerick. (MA show, THe Digital Hub 2007)

‘The Joker’ is a more recent personality, chosen for his subversive tendencies and his irreverence with which to develop the idea of the individual’s ability to resist the power of the system. To date The Joker has been envisaged as a series of paintings and a short animation with sound. Joker Incites 2009, a work in progress, is a narrative piece of how The Joker incites a cheering/booing crowd. The animation uses shadow theatre techniques to create the flickering light similar to that in Globedreamer, (which was created digitally). Light is an important aspect in the work as it evokes the interiority of the imaginative world. This Summer I will travel on a research residency to San Francisco to work with Shadowlight Productions, the premier shadow theatre company in the United States to improve my skills in the production of shadow installations and the construction of puppets.

Above all my practice is about looking closely and discovering that if you look closely enough, you can find beauty, fragility and hope in the ordinary.