About

My practice uses a broad media palette that includes clay and thread. Central themes in my work most often revolve around issues that can be related with the human condition, fragmented time, isolated shards of memories and allegory mired in the quotidian. Often the use of repetition is used as a visual device to overcome issues of scale and that can facilitate grand visual gestures. I use this strategy to set up a tension or dialectical impact with its audience. I employ the fragility of clay as a central motif to reflect on the precarious nature of human existence. The use of the persistent traditional and ancient vessel form with its embedded knowledge of skills and ideas is used in my work for the potential semiotic significance it can offer while it also extends this medium’s unique possibility of combining form and surface.

I live and work in Baltimore, West Cork, a place of immense beauty, wonderful inspiration that is situated along a rugged coastline looking out on spectacular views of Roaring Water Bay. 

Exhibitions

2021 - July 17th - September 11th, Uillinn (West Cork Art Centre), South Stairwell and links Gallery Group Show, Skibbereen, Co. Cork. 2019 - July 11th, Falling into the Sky, O’Driscoll Building, Skibbereen Arts Festival, Co. Cork. 2019 - May 31st, Falling into the Sky, Damer House, Roscrea, Co. Tipperary. 2019 - February 9th - June 23rd, Monumentality/Fragility,European Prize Applied Arts, National Design & Craft Gallery, Kilkenny, Ireland. 2018 - 2019 - Monumentality/Fragility - European Prize Applied Arts, Beaux Arts Mons, Belgium 2017 - Graduation Show, MA Art & Process, Future Marginalia, Crawford College of Art & Design, Cork, Ireland. 2015 - New Artists Exhibition, The Blue House Gallery, Schull, Co. Cork, Ireland. 2015 - Tales & Traces, (Mixed Media 2015), Skibbereen, Co. Cork, Ireland. 2014 - Graduation Show, BA Visual Art, DIT, Portland Row, Dublin, Ireland. 2014 - Surge, WCAC, Skibbereen, Co. Cork, Ireland. 2014 - Surge, Sherkin Island, Co. Cork, Ireland. 2013 - Open Islands, Sherkin Island, Co. Cork, Ireland. 2012 - Studio 8 Collective, IMMA, Dublin, Ireland.

Education

2018 - M.A. Art & Process, Crawford College of Art & Design, Cork. 2014 - Visual Art. 1st class honours, Sherkin Island and Dublin Institute of Technology.

Prizes, Publication & Other

2019 - Ceramics Ireland, Issue 43, Nicola Kelly. 2019 - March 28th, Meet the Makers, Artists Talk, National Design & Craft Gallery, Kilkenny, Ireland. 2018 - Selected for European Prize Applied Art and to be shown in Mons, Belgium. 2014 - Best Thesis Award - Visual Artists Ireland. (National Award) Fragility & Permanence: The Subversive Possibilities of Clay in Contemporary Art. 2014 - Scar, Skibbereen, Co. Cork.