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Art Practice

Body of Work

Control

"I think all art is about control, the encounter between control and uncontrollable"

- Richard Avedon

"How humans became property owners and animals became property"

2017 - 2018

This canon of work is an investigation into control. How humans became property owners and animals became property. I have continued to push my work in order to create awareness of how we treat animals and the issues farmers are dealing with. The materials I work with are wood, dairy products, wire, wax, plaster and found material. Working with a range of material from wood to video I have continued to push my work in order to create awareness of how we treat animals in hope of creating a sense of empathy for the hopeless creatures that can’t speak for themselves. The work reflects extensive research into Dorothy Cross and Maria McKinney. While comparing Temple Grandin’s philosophy with animal activists believes with Lesli Bisgould. I expand the imagery and ideas by making experiments and drawing continuously that feature aspects of the farm and the how the animals interact with each other. I am interested in the viewer’s perception of how animals are treated and why we believes it is okay to control them.

Sculpture/ Casting

The biography of the object

What if you casted milk or cheese? What can be added to the material to make it more authentic? How can I push the material to the limit? These were the questions that anchored this investigation.
Handmade butter was placed into moulds. Cheese was filled into the centre of wax casts. Powdered milk was mixed with plaster to create a fragile material. Cows hair sourced from cows horns was placed into the wax. 
Horn mould

Collection of casts

Collection of work

Construction

"Barricade"

Wood & barbed wire structure

Barricade is one element of a performative art piece where I guided my peers through the sculpture studio. Treating them like cows. Herding them through the space. Electric wire was set up around the workshop trapping them into small areas. As they entered the room each student was branded with a label saying their student number. As they moved through the space they listened to audio taken from the farm. Humans control over animals was experienced. 
Handmade barbed wire

Moving Image

"Cow Pen"

3 screen installation

'Cow Pen' is a Video Installation. 3 monitors are bedded in straw. An iPhone and 2 iPads play 3 different films about details from the farms. Calves playing in straw, a human becoming the cow for the day and a cow giving birth all play at the same time.
18 second snippet from one film
(Please be aware, the scene is of a cow giving birth)
Performance shots

Performance Art

Street in Context

Thomas Street, sound installation

Street in Context is a performative piece where I left the studio to engage with people on the street. During the intervention, I found the IAWS which was a key player in the cooperative movement in Ireland. Linking rural and city together is a key element in the performance. I invited passerby and my peers to engage in the performance. Standing outside the IAWS building they participated in interventions one example is a listening to country sounds while traffic passed by.
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