Kate McElroy

Statement

My work highlights the unsustainable space between capitalisms constant need for growth and the incipient sense of destruction of the natural environment and our human experience. Through correlating different media that spans across places and times I question the interlinked nature of our current conjuncture.

My practice interplays photography, moving image and sound elements, found materials, and spoken word performance in correlated, dynamic installations.

I capture a place in process and precarity, simultaneously constructing and deconstructing. A sense of flux is contrasted by a sense of slow observation. I am interested in the intermingling forces that affects our environments and actions.

I capture elements on the edge of abstraction, stretching the usual parameters of perception, creating a space to reconfigure. It highlights a betweenness, where definitive boundaries dissolve. Through this, I prise open a gap. An opening, to consider an alternative.

GlogauAIR Project

I am interested in how environments are created and the prominent forces and ideologies that shape it. At this current precipice, we are in the need of new critical and imaginative spaces, to examine how we perceive and act within the world. For this residency I will create installations where structures get dismantled, and restructured, creating a new interstitial area of contemplation for the viewer. I aim to weave a sense of past, present and future into the work, drawing on my environment and coalescing materials, photography and recordings to form dynamic constellations of work.

CV Summary

Education

• 2020 – 2021 Master’s degree in Art and Process (1:1), Crawford College of Art and Design, MTU.

Exhibitions

Upcoming

• Vertigo, Cork City, November 2024
• The Lab Gallery, Dublin, March 2025

Past 2024

• Residency and studio exhibition, Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre, Cork, 1.3.24 -31.3.24
• Page, Process, Proceed Studio 12, Cork City, 19.4.24

2023

• Error: /Undefined, Pallas Projects, Dublin, 5.11.23 – 22.11.23
• Oscillation: An Altering Rhythm, Counting House, Cork, 19.5 -21.5.23

2022

• Territory, IMT Gallery, London, 10.11.22 – 11.11.22
• Territory, Sluice, international festival, Barreiro, 3.11.22 – 5.11.22
• Drawbridge, The Lord Mayor’s Pavillion, Fitzgerald’s Park, Cork City. 6.10.22 – 3.11.22
• The Stars are in the Earth, A4 Sounds Studios, Dorset Street, Dublin 1. 11.8.22 – 28.8.22
• 35, Residency exhibition at PADA, Lisbon, 26.8.22
• The Assembly of Descent, Omnu Creative Houses, Rua da Junqueira, Lisbon 4.8.22 – 25.8.22
• Fragments in Constellation, O’Driscoll building, Skibbereen. 22.7.22 – 1.8.22
• inter_site at Queen’s Old Castle, Cork City, 14 & 15.5.22
• Pulsating, p(l)ace, for Faoin Speir, Wandesford Quay, Cork, 28.4.22

2021

• Origins, Lismore selected Graduate Show, Waterford, 6.11.21
• In Cahoots with the Earth, A4 Sounds, Dublin 8, 12.21
• Oileáin, curated by Sinead Barrett, Spike Island, 24.9.21
• A soft rupture, Goma, Waterford City, 15.7.21 – 22.8.21
• And, if we observe the present, Catalyst Arts Centre, as part of Belfast Photo Festival, 3.6.21 – 10.7.21
• Standstill, Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre, 5.6.21 – 10.7.21
• inter_site, The Marina Market, Cork City, 6.21
• Open Insite, Open Studio Exhibition, Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre, 19.6.21- 10.7.21
• Oileáin, Lord Mayors pavilion, Fitzgearld’s Park, Cork as part of Cork Harbour festival, 20.5.21 – 5.6.21.
• Com,ma, window exhibition, 46 Grand parade, 7.1.21 – 27.2.21

Awards and accolades

• 2024 – Arts Council Project Award with collective inter_site
• 2024 – Cork City Council Artist Bursary
• 2024 – Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre Residency Award
• 2023 – Shortlisted for the Artistic European development programme
• 2023 – Gloguair, Artist in residency award
• 2022 – Arts Council Agility Award
• 2022 – Cork City Council Artist Bursary Award
• 2022- – Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre Residency Award
• 2022 – Shortlisted for the Artistic European development programme
• 2021 – Agility Award Arts Council
• 2021 – 1 in 8 national graduates selected for Origins, Lismore Castle Arts
• 2021 – Longlist RDS awards
• 2021 – Cork City Council Art in Context award in conjunction with Sample Studios
• 2021 – Arts Council Ireland Project Award with inter_site
• 2021 – Artist in Residence award at Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre.
• 2020 –– Uillinn: West Cork Arts Cente Residency Award.

Gallery