My research based artistic practice broadly concerns forms of knowledge
production that interrupt calculative and linguistic logic and is informed by
feminist new-materialist approaches to technology. Specifically, my artistic
research fits into the context of the feminist reclamations of holes, flows, leaks
& pores as a marker of material & bodily agency & unruliness. I work across a
number of media; writing and artist publication, sculpture, print,
photography, moving image, sound and digital aided making. In my
installations, this manifests as an exploration of the vitality and unruliness of
the materials I employ such as metal, wood and glass, along with the voice and
imagery as technological codes and pixels.
Recent projects have included Mouthnotes at Pallas Projects (2022). This
installation’s starting point was An Cloch Labhrais (The Speaking Stone), a
huge glacial erratic made from conglomerate puddingstone rock. Located in
Co. Waterford, it is known as a ‘truth’ telling oracle stone. According to legend,
the dramatic crack in the stone occurred after a woman perjured herself in its
presence – her untruth causing it to split in two. Working with a professional
singer, I developed a multi-channel audio-visual work which aimed to reclaim
the stone’s split, and reimagine it as a mouth from which a multitude of
utterances and un/speakable things leak and spill. The installation for Pallas
Projects played with the fabric and history of the exhibition site, a former
school, simultaneously stuttering and echoing the order of language,
numeracy, and structured behaviour.
Time Watched (2022) was an audio-visual sculptural installation exhibited
in the Lab Gallery in May 2022. The work specifically concerned the
compound bitumen or pitch, an extremely slow flowing solid. An
experiment to demonstrate this quality has been ongoing at Trinity
College since the 1940s. Working with Professor Stefan Hutzler, in the Dept.
of Physics in Trinity College Dublin, I developed a multi-channel
audio-visual work contained within a dome shaped structure. The work
concerned the unknowability of certain scientific phenomena and the
connections between humans and technology from working with ancient
tools through to participating in livestreams online.
My practice also considers intuitive, craft-based, and esoteric modes of
knowledge production. I am interested in these forms of meaning-making
because they are independent of, co-existent with, and disruptive of
techno-scientific logic. I also actively seek collaborative ways of making and
researching, be they with artists, curators and non-artists / non-arts based
institutions. I have partaken in interdisciplinary research activities with water diviners,
traditional craft artists, dark matter scientists, a radiographer, a
lie detection researcher and a speech and language therapist.