ARTIST STATEMENT

In my artistic practice and research, I am interested in exploring queer Irish masculinity, identity and sexuality through the use of the nude male figure. Northern Irish cultural assumptions surrounding sexual ‘species’ feed into my studio work as queer people are still marginalised and discriminated against in Northern Ireland. I have struggled with making explicit the sexual desires of the marginalized ‘other’ within these social constrictions. These difficulties led me to invent a fictionalised reality to build my practice upon. Therein lay the possibility to give my characters a freedom that cannot be experienced within heteronormative morality. Typically, the figures – or characters – found throughout my practice inhabit a strange, fantastical island inspired by Hy-Brasil (or Brasil), a mythological island which was said to be off the west coast of Ireland.

The intention of my practice is to create a world where these queer, Irish figures can explore and exist without the limitations of Northern Irish cultural assumptions being placed upon them. By exploring these queer male figures, I hope to disrupt the heteronormative binary and bring forward the invisible and the marginalised.