Aoife Claffey

Statement

I am a multidisciplinary artist based in Cork, Ireland (b.1997). I explore human sensory perception in immersive environments. It is influenced by my interest in human behaviour and the physical exploration of site specific provisional spaces. I create installations by combining mediums such as, interactive projections, reflective found objects, lighting, printmaking with surround sound. Through a multidisciplinary approach, I enhance viewers’ experiences by emphasizing spatial and sensory effects, speculating on alternative spaces. I critically examine societal systems and power structures and often encompass notions of unpredictability, fragility and movement.

My installations are often controlled by the viewers participation with the artwork. Shadows may alternate in intensity and scale passing throughout a collaboration adapting and giving awareness of how one can affect an environment. Reflective and translucent objects shift, and transparent layers of imagery and sound transform unexpectedly each time the work is experienced.

During the process of making I often allow activity to go beyond my control. The work investigates subtly destabilising yet uncanny effects with constant fluctuations which can be engaged with both in a physical but psychological manner. A collective experience but experienced individually.

GlogauAIR Project

During the online residency at GlogauAIR, I want to explore my practice around human sensory perception and behaviour within immersive spaces. For the month of April I am in the Fish Factory, Creative Centre of Stöðvarfjörður in Iceland responding to the ever changing landscape and gather soundscapes and drone footage. I want this residency to coincide while I am in the creative centre in Iceland to develop my practice. I often create interventions that utilise unique venues and display mechanisms to engage with the ever-shifting nature of our current reality, responding to environmental and social contexts and hope to research and experiment with this for this project.

CV Summary

Aoife Claffey is an installation artist, living and working in Cork, Ireland. Her work explores human sensory perception in provisional spaces and creates installations combining projection film, printmaking, found objects and sound. Physiological and psychological tensions between chaos and order are encouraged both during the making, and within the work, to evoke immersive uncanny effects or altered cognitive states.

• Received First Class Honours in both her MA in Art and Process in 2020 and BA in Fine Art in 2019 from CIT Crawford College of Art and Design.
• Awarded six awards and three residencies arising from her Degree Show, leading to a number of exhibitions and opportunities, including the Sample-Studios Graduate Studio Residency.
• Member of both Sample Studios, Backwater Artists and Cork Printmakers.
• Exhibitions include Pallas Projects Dublin, PADA Gallery Lisbon, Spike Island Cork and Marina Warehouse Cork.
• Work is in the collection of Eli Lilly’s and featured in Bloomers Magazine #07 Emerging Female Artists publication in 2019.
• Funded by Cork City and Arts Council in 2024.
• Upcoming exhibition in 2024 in The LAB Gallery in Dublin with her collective inter_site.

Gallery