Treasa O’Brien (she/her) is a filmmaker, writer and visual artist. She is interested in how form and content can express one another. Her practice utilises installation, film, video, text, mixed media, soundworks, drawing and sculpture. The influences in Treasa’s work come from a deep engagement with social politics, psychology and philosophy as well as art, literature and cinema. She has made several short experimental films, and two featurelength films including Eat Your Children (2015), and Town of Strangers (2021), a documentary of the imagination, which has travelled to film festivals internationally and been released in cinemas in the UK and in Ireland. She is a recipient of several Arts Council of Ireland & local authority awards and was the Galway City awardee of Platform 31 in 2022, a bursary and mentorship scheme for 31 artists in Ireland, nominated by their local authority. She is currently working toward a solo show in the Galway Arts Centre (2024). Her work has featured in The Guardian, The Irish Times, Art Monthly, RTÉ Radio 1 & BBC4. Thematically, Treasa’s works explore intersections between feminism, motherhood, science, cultural and personal memory, migration, identity, place, and are made from a consciously feminist and queer perspective. As well as her solo authored practice, she at times works in collaboration with communities in a socially-engaged process, for example, she has worked with women asylum seekers in Co. Clare (Creating Space Award); and in Gort, Co. Galway working with international migrants, as the artist-in-the-community (CREATE Award). Treasa studied Art in Limerick School of Art & Design, and lived in London for several years, where she studied film directing, gaining a MA honours from Goldsmiths and completing a PhD in Film Practice at University of Westminster. She is a founding member of the direct action feminist performance collective Speaking of IMELDA, with whom she made several performance and video works from 2014-18 on the subject of Ireland Making England the Legal Destination for Abortion. Treasa teaches, writes and curates on art and film and has been published widely. Her films and artworks have travelled internationally to festivals and exhibitions. She lives in Galway between the woods and the sea.
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