Kate McElroy 2025

Kate McElroy
10 February to 8 March 2025

Studio open to the public on Tuesday and Friday

For this residency at Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre, I will focus on creating an immersive environment that challenges static notions of form and identity, fostering fluidity and disrupting fixed patterns, to open up new possibilities for transformation. To be altered by an encounter is to be affected in a way that is both disorientating and which undoes some of our assumed habits of thought and perceptions. Re-presenting elements on the edge of abstraction I aim to create a critical and ambiguous environment, inserting a space to interrupt structures and reconfigure.

My practice spans across a dynamic use of media including expanded photography, moving image, installation, spoken word and sound in correlated constellations. The work examines the space between construction and destruction and highlights a moment of precarity. I am interested in the process of change itself and how by seeing the world as a constant state of transformation, we are given opportunities to interrupt it. A sense of flux is contrasted by a sense of slow observation. I am interested in the intermingling forces that affect our environments and actions.

Having previously worked as the Public Engagement Artist at Uillinn, I would like to use this residency is to experiment with ways to effectively and creatively engage audiences with the work and concepts. I aim to create a fertile ground for ideas and conversation to emerge. I will host a book reading session open to the public to act as an idea exchange that will happen in the space. For the open studio days I will experiment with using drawings, extracted from my sketchbook, with words that can act as a prompt for conversations with people. The audience too will be invited to contribute a drawing to echo an idea from the conversation.

Kate graduated with a First Class Honours Master’s Degree in Art and Process, MTU Crawford, 2021. Since graduating she has exhibited in over 20 national and international exhibitions and co-founded the artist collective inter_site. Recent exhibitions and residencies include GlogauAIR, Berlin, 2024, Error: /undefined, Pallas Projects, Dublin, and Oscillation: An Altering Rhythm, Counting House, Cork City, 2023. Upcoming included Vertigo, Cork County Council Building, February, 2025, Liquid Urbanism, The Lab Gallery, Dublin, March 2025, a solo residency and exhibition at Triskel Arts Centre, April – May 2025 and an artist residency at Correlación Contemporánea, Iquitos, Peru, September 2025. Kate is supported by Arts Council Agility and Project Awards and a Cork City Council Artist Bursary.

I will host a book reading session open to the public to act as an idea exchange that will happen in the space. For the open studio days I will experiment with using drawings, extracted from my sketchbook, with words that can act as a prompt for conversations with people. The audience too will be invited to contribute a drawing to echo an idea from the conversation. I would also like to invite a local school to one of the open studios days – perhaps the Galescoil due to having a strong previous relationship with them to invite them into dialogue about the work.

https://www.instagram.com/kate_mcelroy_/

www.katemcelroy.com

WCAC acknowledges the financial support of the Arts Council and Cork County Council in making these residencies possible.