I have been developing a body of work called Fractals & Jay Birds since 2020 and completed a residency at Interface in 2021, to develop a film about the restoration of sitka plantations to biodiverse woodland. I have since committed to the annual Woodland Symposium, a durational residency programme at Interface, to expand this body of work with five other artists and with the support of an ecologist and an archaeologist.
My current series of paintings are companion pieces to my film Forest/ry, evoking a slower, more measured response to the themes of the work. These small works on linen, gesso and birch panels reject the widescreen format of the film in favour of square and rectangular shapes and break down the photographic elements through the use of charcoal and oil paint. I incorporate the immediacy of the mechanical reproduction of images within the slow process of painting with oils. In doing so I reference the short-term thinking of monoculture forestry plantations in the context of the slow development of the ecology of biodiverse forests.
Noelle Gallagher is a visual artist based in Galway, Ireland. A graduate of painting, she has since expanded her practice to include moving image, photography and printmaking techniques. Forest/ry, her new moving image artwork, premiered at Earth Rising festival at IMMA in October 2022. Her first short film, Still Life premiered at DIFF in 2019 alongside two Oscar nominated shorts. Her work been selected for numerous juried exhibitions and film festivals, both nationally and internationally, including PeripheriesOPEN, Cairde Visual, Rua Red, the neo:artprize, Docs Ireland, The Galway Film Fleadh and DC Environmental Film Festival. She is a recipient of the Debi O'Hehir Residency Award from the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, several Individual Artist Bursaries from Galway County Council and Visual Arts Bursary Awards from the Arts Council of Ireland.
http://www.noellegallagher.com