I am a materialist sculptor based in Cork. Over the past number of years I have been building a career through putting together bodies of work for exhibitions around the country. I work in a ‘materialist’ style, meaning I create sculptural objects whose materials and form reflect the research and development I undertake during the process of creating a body of work.

My recent work (exhibited in Dublin, Belfast and Athlone) has seen me fall into a specific and rich area of research, transportation infrastructure and the material legacy it leaves all over the country. I work with forms and materials based on roads, signage, railway tracks and footbridges to create sculptures for gallery and outdoor presentation. I derive this way of working from my interest in the philosophical field of Object-Oriented Ontology which considers the agency of inanimate objects and understands that they exist as ontologically independent from me. What this means for my sculpture is that I am attempting (always in vain) to scratch the surface of a material or a thing and try to get to its essence through a process of ‘working with’ the material.

Ultimately, the work can manifest in many ways. Often as highly finished formalist sculptures that use materials such as commercial vehicle paint, signage material and mirror-polished stainless steel combined in a minimalist vernacular. Other times, the work can take the form of see-through signs or three-dimensional words clinging to the wall. The materials and the research lead the way and the form follows with unpredictable results.