I am a visual artist based in Dublin, and have recently completed an MFA at NCAD. I am interested in the poetics of living and how meaning is forged within the impermanence, the thresholds and the transformations in life. I explore these interests across painting, sculpture, installation, video and projection. In my most recent body of work I have focused more directly on death, a personal process of grief and the universal questions around what remains in the dissolution and transformation of the physical. Informed by James Hillman’s alchemical psychology and by the idea of poiesis – ‘that which leads a thing into being’ - I have considered these questions through the lens of ritual and alchemy, and explorations into the transformation of form through sculpture and paint. With an initial focus for this work on sculptural form I worked directly with the 'empty chair'. This had both a personal relevance, gesturing towards absence via presence, and a wider relevance given its place as a recurring motif throughout the history of art. The chair was transformed in many ways, finally for this iteration, by being ritually wrapped in soft mohair wool and the insertion of nails across its form. It was further transformed via the alchemical nature of fire which was 'layered' onto the surface using a looped video projection, illuminating the chair sculpture. A small bowl of ash, evidence of transformation, rests close to the chair. On the opposite wall, three small abstract oil paintings explore ideas of spirit in ascent. The positioning of the installation in a dark space with low lighting allows for the impact of the illumination and for a slow quiet contemplation within the installation. This work considers the place of death and space for grief in contemporary western life, in a society which is characterised by the speed of neoliberal economic structures, and quietly insists on the reclamation of a slow honouring of the cyclical processes of loss, death, rebirth and renewal.
