Mapping the Space of Dementia Redding California 2022
Following a Research Atlantic Fellowship at the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI) at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) 2022. This project brings together scientists, clinicians, care workers, caring partners, men and women living with dementia and an artist. To build a collaborative space between Art and Science, that creates innovative ways to participate in the lives of persons with cognitive impairment. Mapping the Space of Dementia is about the indeterminate relationship between humans and space. It is how we position and locate ourselves in our world. I propose space is something we produce rather than it being a void we fill with objects. Space is light, physical, fluid and linguistic and made visible in how we map the rhythm of our body and memory through social encounters. I approach the idea that we are all complex and form identities that are marked out by difference and express ourselves with different capacities and abilities. However, some are caught in a milieu whose language is not always easily shared and communicated. In some instances, they may live in a non-verbal wordless zone beyond language. It is within our gift to create transformative spaces that stimulate the senses for one’s milieu and wellbeing. Using advance brain imaging technologies a patient’s EEG is transferred into stained glass window and installed into their home. By focusing on the creative imagination, the owner of the brain circuitry sees their thoughts return through the cosmic rays of the weather illuminated through stained glass. Through this conceptual synaptic cortical artwork, the person transforms the context of their milieu where each encounter will never be experienced the same way twice. See more images
Consider the Object of Art 2021
Text Sandblasted on glass window Sculpture Studio National College of Art and Design Dublin Ireland.
This work explores the idea of art as object and the object of art. Representing ideas is at the heart of art but sometimes this is like reading tea leaves. This text poses questions like what tools legitimate the art process, what are its limits and how do we construct meaning through forms of representation. Is the work of art some kind of surplus to the original concept, idea? By removing glass particles is revealed a narrative that become the narrative of the studio and the architecture.
The art studio is a space of ideas and the creative imagination. The context of the studio is not a retreat that sits outside but rather is defined within an economic, political, historical and the social.
Nomadic Kitchen, Vila Nova Sao Miguel north east of Sao Paulo Brazil 2005-07
Urban Negotiations are art strategies that find possibilities for to engage in every day practices. Nomadic Kitchen is an intervention that collaborates in the process of regeneration with residents of Vila Nova, a favella community in Sao Miguel on the north eastern fringe of Sao Paulo Brazil. Nomadic Kitchen is one urban practice among many in a collaborative and participatory action in the production of public space in Vila Nova. This functions as a community locus where residents self-govern and develop a flexible and creative ways of building a context for living in a precarious environment. The structure is flexible, fluid, nomadic and adaptable to the different occasions and context of the every day. Urban decisions around producing spaces of social encounter are made while cooking, eating and meeting in the Nomadic Kitchen. This interstitial structure becomes a place for dialogue while defining the conditions that determine a context for living. See more images
An Artwork for an Imperfect World 2002-05
“An Artwork for an Imperfect World” is an art strategy to address the social and political structures that creates homelessness in Ireland. This project evolved out of a consultation process and series of research round-table dialogues that developed as a collaborative process bringing together NGO organizations Merchants Quay, The Homeless Agency and people living in homelessness, Temple Bar Gallery, City Arts and the artist. By placing an artwork (an altered van) capable of serving a hot meal to people in homelessness, in Temple Bar Gallery, questions the gallery as site and the object of art as an appropriate site of intervention to hold this discourse. The project disrupts the ordinary function of the gallery as primarily a place of controlled aesthetics, instead prioritizing the experience as a space of sociability in terms of ethical relations where acts of exchange are worked out in the face to face. The work engages with acts of citizenship that is based on participation where the engagement is one of constant negotiation. The signifying strategy of locating this artwork in the public and private sphere awkwardly draws attention to the fault lines of how we see ourselves as a society. An artwork for an imperfect world was launched in Temple Bar Gallery on the 21st February 2005. After the gallery event in Temple Bar Gallery the work was offered to Merchants Quay Ireland to support their outreach program in supplying a service to the homeless in the street of Dublin. See more images
Genus 1993
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Commissioned by Public Art Development Trust and Heathrow Airport Authorities. Bar code drawn on the temple of participants living in the UK or Ireland indicating their date of birth and place of origin. Ethnic identity and belonging were an ongoing concern in term of what was to be gained or lost in the joining European Economic Community. The photographs reveal the multicultural differences between the two countries reflecting the diversity of passengers passing through T1. This dividing tunnel for arrival or departing passengers is regarded as a no man’s land, an ambiguous zone is a suitable spatial metaphor to explore cultural and political complexity.
Ideal Ireland 1991, screen prints in six bus shelters across Dublin, Ireland
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1991 saw the US and its allies lead the military offense of ‘Desert Storm’. A ‘smart bomb’ hit a bunker killing hundreds of women and children in a civilian air raid shelter. The ‘Patriot’ missile defence system is deployed. Iraq uses scud missiles on Israeli and Saudi cities. In Europe the Maastricht treaty is signed. The Birmingham six, wrongfully convicted, are released after 16 years in prison. A tribunal of inquiry is set up to investigate Larry Goodman’s beef company on corruption charges. Contraception is still illegal. 48 thousand people apply for the Morrison Visa scheme to immigrate to the USA.
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This public work assembles an iconic text by Eamon de Valera, “the Ireland that we dreamed of” on the 50th anniversary to the Gaelic League. Juxtaposed to de Valera’s text is an image of the locale observed from the bus shelter. There are six installed works across Dublin city. The work disrupts the imagination of a romantic idealism of a country and people trying to find their place in a modern society within the cultural and political complexity of an immerging European community.