My name is Barbara Conway, a Dublin based multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores the personal and social dimensions of womanhood. Sustainability is a core pillar of my creative process with my experimentation of various mediums including animation, clay and photography. I am particularly drawn to the element of chance, finding inspiration in the unexpected outcomes yielded by blind drawing and clay. For my final exhibition in NCAD, my work, ‘It’s A Pain’ explores the intense physical stress and pain of womanhood and the disconcerting invisibility that deepens with age. This work centres on the hand, a part of our body that is expressive and often adorned by women yet also the first part of the body to reveal aging. Scanned images of my hand, then printed, to exposing the tension with pressure markings left on my hands whilst manicured, an elegant facade enduring inner stress and pain. The ceramic forms are permanent impressions of the stress from pain resulting in various sizes and shapes in colours red and violet. A repetitive animation, in pink colour to explain the emotional narrative documenting the compression action with clay releasing tension in my body. Accompanying these are clear moulds of my hand in two parts. The transparency illustrates the unsettling experience of invisibility of aging in women.
