The breakdown and subsequent redemption of all things once thought to be concrete
(2012)
Us and Them, D-Light Studios

Performance duration: 4 hours.

Disconnect
2012

A large black confessional box stands monolithic in the centre of the gallery.  From either side the viewer may enter, and from there receive an intimate experience from a series of embodied texts.  Simultaneusly, the audio is being broadcast in the gallery bathrooms.

Fractured and reconstructed concepts of identity and public/private spheres are explored in this video, audio and text installation.  Through the actors, the appropriated texts are re-imagined and a character is formed around them, going beyond the original to examine the construction of truth, intimacy, personality and selfhood.

A collaboration between artists Sinead McDonad, Alan Delmar, and the NoDrama theatre group (Neil Curran, Shane Robinson, Eamon Culloty, Erin Hug, Declan Ryan and Dominik Turkowski).  The text was appropriated from various anonymous contributors to dating websites.

Disconnect was first exhibited in the Lab Gallery as part of From Context to Exhibition 2012.

Unit1 @ the Exchange gallery, Temple Bar
24th April 2012

We can only meditate over events that have happened in the past.  The past is irreversable, we can only look back as distant observers.

Images by Ciara McKeon

Exploring how minute changes to my physical person can bring about new interactions and experiences.

TV OD 2012
4.3.12 at Block T

Redux. Two hour durational performance employing live video feed.

God Was Here
2012
cling film, sellotape 

Sculpture works developed in personal response to church sponsored state abuse.
 

Drained
2012
mixed media 

T.V. O.D.
Performance, Sound & Installation
November, 2011. Screentest Exhibition at NCAD.

Exploring the ephemerality and transferability of identity in the wake of the information age.

Untitled, 2011

Trans-Immanence
Thursday 5th May 2011 - LiveStock at The Market Studios, Dublin

“… the contradictions that put the flesh in opposition to the spirit, the instant to time, the swoon of immanence to the challenge of transcendence, the absolute of pleasure to the nothingness of forgetting, will never be resolved …”
- Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

Representing conflicts within a particular identity.

Stand behind basin of Water - Kneel down in front of audience with hands resting on dirty floor for support - Submerge hair in cold water and washing detergent - Clean stains off the walls with hair, holding hands against the wall for support - Attempt to sweep the dust on the floor into a pile using dress - Periodically bang head off walls - Repeat - For every stain you wash, you leave two behind

The performance was intended to convey an element of awkwardness and humor, but adopted an increasingly distressing feel as time went on. The total duration for this piece was two and a half hours.

Public Disturbance
2011

INVESTIGATION:
To see how the general public would react (if even) to something completely out of sync with their daily life.

Logically speaking, what exactly makes this way of existing any more or less valid than anyone else on the street?

Weight to fall at any moment
Tuesday 14th December 2010
as part of the exhibition “Cheer Up! The Worst is yet to Come” in Block T

“… exposed, larger than life,    
and due to break my neck …”
- Adrienne Rich, The Roofwalker

Becoming Invisible
2010, The Liberties, Dublin 8

For this early project I assumed the physical appearance of an elderly woman, attempting to “pass” as her while I took a short journey around the Liberties area (an area with quite an older population).  I chose to embody an old woman as I wanted to see would it be possible to convincingly pass as somebody extremely physically different to me.  Due to my lack of expertise in special effects makeup, I had to keep my head bowed most of the time, however the makeup I wore to age myself did look convincing from a distance.

Suprisingly I passed with little or no comment, apart from a small child who pointed me out.  Although I initially had concerns about any hope of going unnoticed on the street, I need not have worried.  I later named the performance “Becoming Invisible”, as through doing this action I realised just how much that elderly people are ignored and unacknowledged on the street.  By even just wearing a headscarf and a pleated dress, people subconsiously seem to shut off and ignore the person in front of them; the elderly figure is stripped of any youth, glamour, or vitality and therefore is hardly visible.  This particular feeling of invisibility was something I never experienced before in my own physical identity.

Finding an introspective space within a public sphere. 2010

Obscured and protected in a semi-transparent cocoon, I am able to self reflect.  On the busy street at rush hour I am simultaneously abstract to them and abstracted from them.  Occasionally, the device slowly folds back like a fan, and I emerge, dressed to provoke and ready to snap the results at any moment. The cocoon folds back once again I am protected and abstracted from the turmoil outside, free to process the data I have collected.

the cocoon was made from cling film, sellotape, rolled up paper and wire.  I like ambitious constructions using humble materials, they are versatile and have a nostalgic quality to them, while being highly transformative.