My creative focus is an enquiry of the body and human condition. I have a particular fascination with the skin, which I see as an interface between the person within and the world around us.
I am an Irish artist based in London, fusing my first degree in Engineering with a Masters in Fine Art. My practice is an interplay between the mediums of oil painting and time-based digital media, feeding off an underlying urge to make the pixel more visceral.
My digital work centres on collaboration with actual people to explore aspects of what/who they are, thus, there is a realness which feeds the rich imagery. Often, this includes mappings of ‘non-normative’ bodies, and digital investigations of the human body as a celebrated, objectified, abstracted form.
Creatively, my roots are firmly planted in the Renaissance when the exploration of the body was led by artists. Nurtured by an interest in Sci-Fi and transhumanism, those roots developed – bypassing the Enlightenment, feeding on a few 20th and 21st century artists, and up to the present moment – looking at the near future evolution of humans.
An ongoing project in my practice is Birth Sleeves. Taken from Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon, ‘sleeve’ is the term used for bodies that serve as a receptacle for the human consciousness. The body an individual is born with is called their Birth Sleeve. Birth Sleeves manifests as a body of research which has been presented at multiple solo shows in the form of digital artworks printed onto silk, a curatorial project in collaboration with a group of 16 international artists, and has served as an impetus for the creation of new oil paintings.
Sometimes the work confronts the viewer with a particular human issue. For example, the seminal work Infinite Surface made in collaboration with Prof. Richard Sawdon Smith, challenges the stigma attached to living with HIV. The development of this film into a VR installation was supported by the pharmaceutical company Gilead, the main provider of PrEP.
I have exhibited extensively in Europe, Australia/New Zealand and the US, including the Vigeland Museum, Oslo; Auckland Uni of Technology; Kings College London; Arco Madrid; Guildhall Gallery (City of London Corp); Ars Electronica; and the London Group.
