Cork artist: My painting practice has been greatly influenced by growing up in the countryside

Tell us about yourself:

I am an artist and writer based in Backwater Artist Group, Cork city. I make drawings, paintings, installations and moving image work that engage with Irish identity and the Mother Ireland figure. The landscape acts as a framework for my practice, allowing the work to reflect on suppressed feminine archetypes and the influence of Irish history and literature on both our cultural memory and our current collective perspective of space.

I graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 2022 and I previously studied Fine Art at MTU Crawford College of Art & Design.

Where were you born?

Bandon.

Where do you live?

Cork - I didn’t get far.

Earliest childhood memory?

I spent a lot of time in the car looking out at hedgerows so they appear a lot in my work. 

My painting practice had been greatly influenced by growing up in the countryside. 

Hedgerows hold a magical quality for me; they are like these wondrous corridors of time.

Person you most admire?

There are a lot of artists and writers who have wonderful practices that I aspire towards. I am surrounded by an inspirational bunch at Backwater Artist Group so there are really too many to list. However, I have long been an admirer of The White Pube, the collaborative identity of London based-art critics Zarina Muhammed and Gabrielle De la Puente. I feel very honoured that Zarina has written a text that will accompany my upcoming exhibition.

Where was your most memorable holiday?

I was recently in Edinburgh on a short trip and I saw two amazing exhibitions at the Talbot Rice Gallery. Jesse Jones’ work The Tower is an incredibly moving expanded-cinema installation that deals with the history of the Magdalene laundries in Ireland. Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s work 45th Parallel is a film installation that showcases incidents that problematise the idea of national borders and is an interesting exploration of the relationship between language and the landscape.

It was a great experience seeing these artists tackle these topics I am interested in. I left Edinburgh feeling incredibly inspired.

Favourite TV programme?

I think Reeling In The Years is a brilliant programme. It’s so overwhelming to be presented with all these events that happen in the space of a singular year, and to think how much each one of these events and its effects continue to shape our realities today and how we create Irish identity. It’s mind-bending when you think about it. The factors and influences that continue to ‘haunt’ and shape us is something that I am very interested about in my work.

Favourite radio show?

I listen to podcasts. I particularly enjoy Manchán Magan’s podcast The Almanac of Ireland. He is a great character with a lot of interesting insights on the relationship between language and the landscape.

Last book you read?

Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies In Feminist Art by Lauren Elkin. It’s a great survey of some wonderful artists, writers and theorists that I love.

Best book you read?

Pond, by Claire Louise Bennett, is a novel I keep returning to. In fact, as part of the research stage of this exhibition, I facilitated a reading group with the exhibition’s curator Kim Crowley. A group of Cork artists, Elinor O’Donovan, Elize De Beer, Julie Landers and Sadhbh Moriarty, Kim and I, explored the themes of this novel in great detail. I am particularly struck by this contemporary tale of a woman living in isolation in the Irish countryside and how her interior world expands out into the landscape she inhabits.

Last album/CD/download you bought?

My friend gifted me Laurie Shaw’s record The Pelms. He’s a great musician and I love his lyrics.

Favourite song?

That’s an impossible question, but I have randomly been listening to the ’90s pop song Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover by Sophie B Hawkins and I find the lyric ‘I am everything tonight I’ll be your mother’ very poetic. It became quite a propulsive mantra as I was thinking through the potential of embodying the Mother Ireland figure of Irish art history as I was making my paintings. My process when making is often influenced by lyrics from pop songs. 

I often find a lyric will abstract itself from a song and stick in my head until it nearly becomes something else entirely that inspires a new idea.

One person you would like to see in concert?

I’d love to see The Pillow Queens. Their song Liffey is filled with some great lyrics and imagery, ‘Oh spread me over the Liffey and sing me off to sleep’. I love the idea of becoming a landscape. Again, this has been a very propulsive lyric that inspired some creative thinking in my practice.

Morning person or night owl?

I am very lucky to have a studio in the Backwater Artist Group which is an amazing facility for artists in Cork city. I love my studio space so whenever I am there, morning or night, I feel very supported and motivated to make work.

Your proudest moment?

I am very proud of this current exhibition at St. Luke’s Crypt. I’ve been working on it since I returned to Cork following my study at Glasgow School of Art last year in collaboration with my friend Kim Crowley who is the curator of this show. I am looking forward to the exhibition opening and finally presenting the work.

Name one thing you would improve in your area in which you live?

The housing crisis.

What makes you happy?

I’m happy when I’m in the studio working on something. I’ve been incredibly privileged to have the opportunity to make work for exhibition. I am very grateful to Bloomers for producing this exhibition and for supporting the production of this new body of work. This is the dream.

How would you like to be remembered?

Oh, any way at all really.

What else are you up to at the moment?

My exhibition at St Luke’s continues until October 21 and includes a painting installation and a sound and moving image work.

I will also be reading some writing I have been working on during my residency at Sirius Arts Centre in Cobh at an event happening later in the month - October 28.