I am a Kildare and Dublin based artist making work engaging with the implications of patriarchal institutions and norms on female autonomy. My areas of interest include feminist art practices as methodology, hidden labour in domestic spaces and critical fabulation through narrative. I work within the medium of video, using both digital and analogue processes. Spoken dialogue guides the narrative in the video work. I utilise approaches from documentary and essay-style filmmaking, as well as feminist-archival practices. Historical research acts as the impetus for my work; specifically, I investigate women’s experiences with subjugation in patriarchal settings. My process involves the gathering of artefacts in relation to the research, documented in both public and private spaces. The materials I come across in my research process become integral to the work, grounding the artistic practice in an archival and specific historical setting. These artefacts include archival written documents, archival analogue footage and specific sites where these historical events would have occurred. Part of my process is formatting these materials into footage that can be edited into the video work; digitising the analogue video, digitally scanning documents and recording site visits. Yet, in including these materials, the work avoids a typical, historiographical reading of archival material, and adopts an anachronical, critical approach, subverting the conventions of archival methodologies. My work deals with sensitive topics and real people’s stories, so I am cautious to avoid a voyeuristic approach, and instead be explicit in my role as archivist and artist. I am equally present in the work alongside the subjects I am investigating. I ensure that I am taking an ethical approach in how much of the story is told, carefully treading the lines between esotericism and exotericism. The final work is never an attempt to create a retelling of knowledge that can be found in the archive, but instead the goal is to allow for counter-histories to be formed. I work with and against the archive, utilising critical fabulation to enable autonomy and a voice to be given to women who were not granted this in their own time. I approach what I’ve learned in my research with nuance, and my practice as an artist allows for productive and emboldened speculative-narratives to be formed surrounding the more personal aspect of the lives I investigate.
