Kate McElroy
1 to 30 March 2024
Studio open to the public on Friday and Saturday
My work captures an atmosphere of constant growth and a simultaneous sense of incipient destruction. I fixate the viewers' perception on the process of change itself, suspending them in a sense of transformation. I create dynamic installations using photography, film, performance, found materials and sound, drawing on multifarious aspects of the environment to create new ambiguous spaces for contemplation, stretching the sense of perception. Coalescing a sense of space and time, the work highlights a moment of precarity. A space between construction and deconstruction.
This will be my fourth residency at Uillinn. The space and time of this studio residency has always been very formative to my practice and I will use this opportunity to experiment with installation possibilities between the varied elements of my work. How the work is installed and relate to each other in dynamic ecology is very important for the work and having a studio space like this allows me to weave the multifarious elements together.
My work captures elements on the edge of abstraction, stretching the usual register of perception. I present an ambiguity, so the viewer has space to recreate and move beyond the visible. The work often implements an optical oscillation, through this it subtly suggests a malleable, unfixed reality. The work captures a place in process, simultaneously constructing and deconstructing. It highlights a betweenness, where definitive boundaries dissolve . . .
. . ,
Through correlating various media from our current social reality and re-presenting materials often discarded and overlooked, I prise open a gap.
An opening, to consider an alternative___
At the culmination of my residency I will have an open studio display open to the public where I will be present to have open dialogue inviting feedback from the public. I will draw on my previous experience using Visual Thinking Strategies and from my engagement work at Uillinn to elicit conversation and feedback from participants. I am happy to connect with any small groups or communities of interest during this time.
The experience of the work on the viewer, the individual's response and developing relationship and knowledge through dialogue is of special interest to me. The work becomes more alive when the ideas and impressions can be shared, creating new strands of thought, which can act as catalysts for change.
Kate McElroy is a Cork based artist who graduated with a First Class Honours Master’s Degree in Art and Process, MTU Crawford, 2021. Since graduating she has exhibited in 20 national and international exhibitions and co-founded the artist collective inter_site. Recent exhibitions include Error: /undefined, Pallas Projects, Dublin, and Oscillation: An Altering Rhythm, Counting House, Cork City, 2023. Kate has been supported by Arts Council Agility Awards, a project award, and Cork City Council Artist Bursaries. Kate has an upcoming residency at GlogauAIR, Berlin 2024 and exhibition at the Lab gallery 2025.
Instagram - @kate_mcelroy_
Facebook - Kate McElroy
Twitter- @katemc7
A dusting, a glimmer, Glass shards and light installation with accompanying performance, PADA, Portugal, Image Credit: Lena Leiws-King
Modular repetition, Video installation, Error:/ Undefined, Pallas Projects, Dublin, Artists own image 2023
Cascading, high, Photographic installation, Stamp festival, The Counting House, Cork City. image credit Roland Paschhoff 2023
Kate McElroy
29 November 2022 to 2 January 2023
Studio 3
Open Studio - Saturday 17 December
Kate McElroy is a multidisciplinary artist currently based between Cork and Limerick. She received a first class honours masters degree from Crawford College of Art and Design (2021).
Kate will use this time at Uillinn to experiment with the interplay of photography and installation elements in her work.
Kate examines the homogenization of place and the industrialization of space and time. Capturing the development of new glass and steel architecture in major cities such as Dublin, London, Cork and Lisbon she contrasts this with images taken from ruins from a post-industrial site in Barreiro, Portugal. She will use this opportunity to explore the interplay between images, found waste material, sound and text to create environments which capture the space between construction and deconstruction. She questions this current moment of precarity between our natural and built environments.
She does this through a lens of seeing the world in a constant state of interrelated processes of flux. Rooted in process philosophy, this perspective has agency as it means our choices have affect.
Past Residencies
29 March to 19 June 2021 / 19 June to 10 July - Open Studio Exhibition
29 June to 21 July 2020 / 21 - 31 July - Open Studio Exhibition
A layering of space and time, my work interplays found elements and photography. Traces of places,
remnants
of
spaces___
A sense of flux, capturing an environment that is in transit and transformation is contrasted by a sense of presence and slow observation. I am interested in the intermingling invisible forces that affects our environments and actions.
I capture elements on the edge of abstraction, stretching the usual register of perception. I present an ambiguity, so the viewer has space to recreate and move beyond the visible. The work often implements an optical oscillation, through this it subtly suggests a malleable, unfixed reality.
My work captures a place in process, simultaneously constructing and deconstructing. It highlights a betweenness, where definitive boundaries dissolve . . .
. . ,
Through correlating photographic processes and re-presenting materials often discarded and overlooked, I prise open a gap.
An opening, to consider an alternative___
Kate McElroy in conversation with Moze Jacobs
WCAC acknowledges the financial support of the Arts Council and Cork County Council in making these residencies possible.
