A Sea Change, into something rich and strange
Eleanor McCaughey
RHA, Ashford Gallery
Thursday 10 October — 10 November 2024
McCaughey’s practice explores thematic threads surrounding the body, identity and place, using symbols and metaphors that best express personal narratives. Watery hybrids, drowning dames, flailing females, peace offerings, magnetic moons, brain fog on the horizons and empathic monsters emerge in the work.
McCaughey's work is continually evolving through research, studio-based experimentation and current reflections on the body through lived experiences of endometriosis, infertility and menopause , out of which her conceptual concerns take shape. Looking at feminist phenomenology of art and form, this work is a personal attempt to express what it is to live in a female body. In the manifestation of this rich and strange world, the ‘woman’ arises in connection with female identity as she takes on multiple forms, as a mermaid, siren, bird, monster and negotiates the boundaries between mortal/divine, Christian/pagan, artificial and biological. Questioning the representation and construction of female social identity.
This work takes conceptual and aesthetic queues from the perpetually shifting coastal environment of Rossnowlagh, in Donegal. Recording climatic occurrences while roaming, listening, and mapping, the materiality of the work has been informed by gathering observations from naturally occurring forms, textures, colour, hues, tones, and light. The paintings, sculptures and installations embody the agency of the environment and memories of place past and present.
Throughout the making process, the artist has been in correspondence with poet Jill Kenny, sharing knowledge, myths, memories and personal narratives. Eleanor and Jill crossed paths on residency at Tyrone Guthrie Centre in 2023 and found common ground through lived experiences of sickness and healing. Jill Kenny was commissioned to write a piece for A Sea Change, into something rich and strange.
Eleanor McCaughey
RHA, Ashford Gallery
Thursday 10 October — 10 November 2024
McCaughey’s practice explores thematic threads surrounding the body, identity and place, using symbols and metaphors that best express personal narratives. Watery hybrids, drowning dames, flailing females, peace offerings, magnetic moons, brain fog on the horizons and empathic monsters emerge in the work.
McCaughey's work is continually evolving through research, studio-based experimentation and current reflections on the body through lived experiences of endometriosis, infertility and menopause , out of which her conceptual concerns take shape. Looking at feminist phenomenology of art and form, this work is a personal attempt to express what it is to live in a female body. In the manifestation of this rich and strange world, the ‘woman’ arises in connection with female identity as she takes on multiple forms, as a mermaid, siren, bird, monster and negotiates the boundaries between mortal/divine, Christian/pagan, artificial and biological. Questioning the representation and construction of female social identity.
This work takes conceptual and aesthetic queues from the perpetually shifting coastal environment of Rossnowlagh, in Donegal. Recording climatic occurrences while roaming, listening, and mapping, the materiality of the work has been informed by gathering observations from naturally occurring forms, textures, colour, hues, tones, and light. The paintings, sculptures and installations embody the agency of the environment and memories of place past and present.
Throughout the making process, the artist has been in correspondence with poet Jill Kenny, sharing knowledge, myths, memories and personal narratives. Eleanor and Jill crossed paths on residency at Tyrone Guthrie Centre in 2023 and found common ground through lived experiences of sickness and healing. Jill Kenny was commissioned to write a piece for A Sea Change, into something rich and strange.
Whispers of rhythm balance on my hands
Eleanor McCaughey
Commissioned by Draíocht
Wednesday 12 June — Saturday 28 September 2024
Curated by Sharon Murphy
Whispers of rhythm balance on my hands is inspired by the artist’s contemplation on the processes of making art
and in particular her investigation into the possibilities of paint as a medium in two- dimensional aspect and in
expanded three-dimensional iterations. These include sculptural assemblages, mixed media, video, textiles and print.
Her deeply intuitive and playful exploration of the materiality of paint via form, colour, rhythm, flow, gestural marks,
layering and collaging is in her own words ‘continually in flux’, evolving through research, studio-based
experimentation and reflection on personal experiences of healing from endometriosis and infertility, out of which her
conceptual concerns take form.
McCaughey’s work has personal and hidden meanings that are bound up in learned, lost and altered theological
ideologies and humanistic notions that the artist has been exposed to through time. Her work is rooted in the history of
art in particular medieval and Renaissance religious paintings, fragments of which fill her visual journals and function
as a form of visual thinking and as a core resource for her paintings. Of interest in particular is the history and politics
that surround the female body, the representation and construction of female social identity and the idealized
representation of woman throughout art history. Recently McCaughey has been drawn to the process of ‘Active
Imagination’ a method of analytical psychology which brings unconscious content to consciousness and produce a
wide array of images, conscious memory material, feelings, symbols, figures (animals, mythological) and images and
shapes of wholeness.
The work for this exhibition has emerged organically and site specifically over a long gestation period of 18 months.
McCaughey says of this process that having a studio space in Dublin is a great privilege, it is a safe space where an
artist can disconnect from the noise outside, slow down, digest thoughts and ideas and reconnect with the self. The
artist/curator relationship was dynamic and mutually enriching characterised by a sharing back and forth about art,
painting, femininity, female agency, mental health, histories and embodied memories all of which has seeped into the
exhibition in distilled and abstracted ways.
McCaughey's work is physical, tactile, and handmade with an equal focus on its shifting materiality. Both her painting
and sculpture for this exhibition reveal traces of the body, performance, and healing activity via brush stroke, mark
making, and moulding. It is important to McCaughey that these qualities lend a symbolic dimension to the work,
emitting a certain presence of the artist despite her absence. In turn it invites the viewer to inhabit the space and
experience the work.
Eleanor McCaughey
Commissioned by Draíocht
Wednesday 12 June — Saturday 28 September 2024
Curated by Sharon Murphy
Whispers of rhythm balance on my hands is inspired by the artist’s contemplation on the processes of making art
and in particular her investigation into the possibilities of paint as a medium in two- dimensional aspect and in
expanded three-dimensional iterations. These include sculptural assemblages, mixed media, video, textiles and print.
Her deeply intuitive and playful exploration of the materiality of paint via form, colour, rhythm, flow, gestural marks,
layering and collaging is in her own words ‘continually in flux’, evolving through research, studio-based
experimentation and reflection on personal experiences of healing from endometriosis and infertility, out of which her
conceptual concerns take form.
McCaughey’s work has personal and hidden meanings that are bound up in learned, lost and altered theological
ideologies and humanistic notions that the artist has been exposed to through time. Her work is rooted in the history of
art in particular medieval and Renaissance religious paintings, fragments of which fill her visual journals and function
as a form of visual thinking and as a core resource for her paintings. Of interest in particular is the history and politics
that surround the female body, the representation and construction of female social identity and the idealized
representation of woman throughout art history. Recently McCaughey has been drawn to the process of ‘Active
Imagination’ a method of analytical psychology which brings unconscious content to consciousness and produce a
wide array of images, conscious memory material, feelings, symbols, figures (animals, mythological) and images and
shapes of wholeness.
The work for this exhibition has emerged organically and site specifically over a long gestation period of 18 months.
McCaughey says of this process that having a studio space in Dublin is a great privilege, it is a safe space where an
artist can disconnect from the noise outside, slow down, digest thoughts and ideas and reconnect with the self. The
artist/curator relationship was dynamic and mutually enriching characterised by a sharing back and forth about art,
painting, femininity, female agency, mental health, histories and embodied memories all of which has seeped into the
exhibition in distilled and abstracted ways.
McCaughey's work is physical, tactile, and handmade with an equal focus on its shifting materiality. Both her painting
and sculpture for this exhibition reveal traces of the body, performance, and healing activity via brush stroke, mark
making, and moulding. It is important to McCaughey that these qualities lend a symbolic dimension to the work,
emitting a certain presence of the artist despite her absence. In turn it invites the viewer to inhabit the space and
experience the work.
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