Personal Statement

Having grown up in a small town in Ireland, I have found this period of living in London to be by far the most exciting of my life. Since moving here, I have been exposed to so much that I would never see at home: such a variety of people, cultures and expressions of self, all freed up by the anonymity of the city. However, I still love my hometown of Dingle, and gain inspiration from it, both its beauty and its contradictions -- with many people still being close-minded, even amongst a population so full of artists and musicians. Nevertheless, I need to distance myself from my hometown and country, to be able to look back on it and analyse my heritage.

What motivates me is that I have an urge to create, and to share my story and heritage with the world. I believe that every work should have something to say, and to try to achieve this, I take concepts from my life. I want to show the beauty of Ireland and how sustainable the traditional values are. I link materials and processes into my concepts, in order to get the best delivery. I'm interested in the manipulation of materials, and how it affects meaning. For example, in my 'In Plain Sight' project, I delved into my family's history, and focused on how my great-great-grandfather and I both had market stalls, though over a hundred years apart. To make the animals I sold on my market stall, I had to learn to crochet and needle felt, crafts I still explore today.

As someone who suffers from OCD, I've always wanted to explore it in a project, to share my struggle. In my 'Multiples’ Project, I focused on the tension of yarn on sponges, and linked that to the tension of stretching my face when doing my OCD rituals. This focus on materiality helped me immensely, as did learning everything about the material. I learnt more about my condition through this project, and it helped me to recognise my OCD and admit it to the world. Some of my OCD reveals itself through my relationship with touch, and this shows in how I like to work materially, and change the properties of materials through processes.

I have gained so much from Foundation, such as different ways of working from every discipline, which I bring into my practice. In the sculpture work I did, I saw how different people burn pieces of foam, and I used audience participation for the first time. I find involving others makes my work more varied, and leaves it open to chance, something I would like to explore. I also learnt the importance of drawing in my process, to easily and quickly extract details and get stuff down onto the page, as well as communicating ideas to other people and my future self.

Some of the practitioners I’m interested in are Judith Scott & Martin Margiela. In Scott's case, it's her use of materiality and dedication to the materials that I love. She takes such humble objects and processes them with her wrapping of textiles. I am fascinated by the way the materials and forms change with this process, and what happens between them. I tied Scott into my work on my OCD in ‘Multiples’, as I resonated with the tension in the wrapping of her pieces, and was interested in how that changed the texture and form of the piece. As for Margiela, I am interested in how he reused atypical materials to give them a new life, with a focus on craft. I linked this in with my ‘In Plain Sight’ work, experimenting with techniques used by Irish craftspeople, manipulating paper inspired by old pictures of basket weavers.

I see my work developing by exploring craft, and slowing my work down on BA compared to the intensity that we have on Foundation. I would love to focus more on sustainability, while developing the same themes based around myself and my background. From Dingle to London, I want to continue bringing my heritage to my work and the world, trying to stand out in the anonymity of London.

Personal Statement

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