In public exploration of internal conflicts, I attempt to find justification for my being-in-the-world. In physical performance, (to camera), in object and painting, always in symbiotic relationship, I consistently expose psychological ruptures, laying bare abrasions and indoctrinations hampering any organic progress.
I link organic development with creative output, often sharing the cathartic process. The frankness of my discourse and the consequences from the life I’ve chosen inform the responsibility I assume in being an artist. I often adopt performative personas for creative investigation. All personas have stories and strong visual identification, almost always influenced by fictious cinema creations. As persona I imbue public interaction with Lacanian intersectionality, a watcher being watched, watching themselves being watched.
I was born in Kerry, studied at Limerick School of Art, moved to London in 1985. I was 10 years with UK performance collective The People Show, before focusing on a duality of solo practice, public, (Engaged Art Action, 1997-2005) and private.
Engaged Art Action was direct action social intervention. A rejection of product favouring collective realisation, most often with my physical presence as focus. I removed toxic thoughts on streets and at festivals, toured a confessional to fetish clubs, travelled to New York carrying peace pledges at the outset of the American War in Iraq, instigated the UK’s first social interventionist festival and spent two days in a shop window with a snake in Dublin during St Patrick’s Week. I was Artist in Residence at The Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club at its beginning.
Private practice ran alongside public. Often visceral to camera performances, usually taking the form of counter indoctrination or cathartic realisation through repeated actions.
Going forward I question my surroundings from the perspective of psychoanalytic theory, exploring the unconscious as it applies to social organisation.