Artist and Researcher
Highlights from modules covered while studying fine art in NCAD 2021-2023.
The work from 2021/22 is very clearly shaped by the impact of COVID 19, it features anything from masks to puppet anthropomorphized depictions of COVID 19 itself.
Building from the previous research module, in the final module of the year I made 3 short videos. Once again this very much looks and processes the COVID times that we were starting to emerge from.
As part of this module I made another soft crocheted sculpture.
In this module I start using crochet and textiles to make soft sculptures and graphs. This is the start of a project that looks and deals with COVID 19 very directly.
This is the first self directed modules of the course.
The crochet Blanket shows a graph of the COVID 19 vaccine uptake rate in Ireland. The yellow creatures are personifications of the many variants of COVID 19.
There were two explorations in printmaking for me- the first was an overlap between print and video. This looked at the idea of making, and unmaking. It’s also the first use of video/animation in a fine art context during these studies.
The second exploration develops the embossing I use in the the first part of the module and incorporates colour.
For this module I started with the some of the images I had gathered in the photography module.
Digital Cameras do not create a record of light present at a time, but rather a set of instructions to recreate what was detected by the digital sensor as pixels for a screen. With the opening and closing of the Digital Image, it changes.
Similarly when remembering a memory, the Memory is not the recollection of the time itself, but rather the last time you recalled the the Memory. In each recollection it changes.
This body of work exists as a record of intersecting thoughts, the paintings build from this relationship between digital imaging, and memory. An overlap between a physical place, and psychological one.
I’m not always interested in working with photography. I have plenty of experience working with 35mm film and digital imaging. For this module I looked at long exposures and more abstract photography.
In this module I learned how to work with pouring plaster and clay molds. This for me culminated as an exploration of the unseen space between the face an the mask.
