BIOGRAPHY

 I am an Irish artist living and working in Dublin. I am studying Fine Art, Print in the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. I suffer from a condition called endometriosis, which causes me to have extreme physical pain. I use art as an outlet to try to manage and deal with my pain. I use different processes such as print, drawing, video and photography. To try and express my pain into a physical form, I have hammered into copper plates with various different steel tools. The violence and physicality of the plates are juxtaposed by the delicate and softness of the prints on paper. I have treated the plates as if they are my body and the hammering into the plates represents the damage this disease has done to my physical and mental health. The prints then represent the scaring and are a physical record of my illness, as endometriosis is a hidden illness and is very hard to diagnose. I have used various different sizes of plates from very large to very small to express how my pain feels on different days. The physicality of working on these different size plates also adds to the overall effect of the print as it can be very physically hard work which is tough on my body as I suffer from fatigue due to the illness. I also thought it was important to capture this process in video form to hear and see the violent nature of how the prints are made and in turn how my pain is actualised into visual form.