New Paragraph
Artists in Residence 2020/2021
Photo by Malcolm McGettigan
Rhona Byrne
UCD College of Science
I work across performative sculpture, events, spatial environments, drawing, objects, clothing, video and photography. My work explores embodied knowledge and cognition relating to built and social space. For this residency I will be making work in relation to current Covid 19 restrictions in light of our innate preferences for play, security and shelter through concepts such as connectivity, belonging, togetherness, immersion, distraction, vulnerability and isolation.
My process involves research into places and people, talking, observing, photographing and appropriating depurposed materials, spaces, ideas from varied sectors. My works are hand-made, sometimes fabricated, re-thinking materials, their use, resonance, reason for being.
The outcome of my work depends on the idea but aims to invite interaction, experiencing it both privately and publicly.
Most of my projects are contextually responsive and relational, investigating fundamental human values and how we behave, adapt in, and inhabit space and place. I’m interested in how our cognitive processes might evolve due to technology and climate change and most recently how Covid 19 will influence needs and spatial design.
Rhona graduated from NCAD BFA Sculpture 1994 then worked in Architecture and Design until 2002. Since then she has exhibited and
been commissioned in Ireland and internationally and have an ongoing research into Environmental psychology. Recent works; The Scribble, sculpture and gathering space, Maynooth University Dept of Education ‘19; Huddlewear, Intimacy, Science Gallery Dublin ‘19; The Central Field live Land Artwork with Yvonne Mc Guinness, InContext4 ‘18,Artist residency FAAP Sao Paulo, Brazil ’18.
Previous Works
The Scribble
A Percent for Art commission for the
Education Hub building in Maynooth University.
The sculpture emerges from the rear courtyard, and traverses energetically throughout the building with a large circular seat underneath the sculpture for students to gather.The key aesthetic aim is to express the energy and motion of thought systems, the complexities of learning processes and how we make connections, make meaning and share knowledge.
Stainless steel, paint and upholstery.
Huddlewear
Temple Bar Gallery and Studios
The installation, including sculpture, drawing and wearables, reflects on the desires and tensions experienced between private thought and public behaviour, feelings of isolation and belonging, connectivity and relating, distraction and attending and the fragile state between comfort and discomfort. ‘Huddlewear’, is a series of wearable artworks/ social clothing developed by the artist during an artists residency at Facebook HQ Dublin.
The Central Field
Artist duo Yvonne McGuinness and Rhona Byrne’s project The Central Field is a temporary Live Land Artwork, situated on land in Adamstown, Dublin, during its interim phase before becoming a commercial town centre. Over 6 months the artists produced a series of live and immediate responses, actions, earthworks, public events, workshops, performances, interventions, gatherings and activities. They collaborated with local residents, local schools and community groups. The aim was to make this land a place for gathering and to explore concepts of transition and potential land use, private and public ownership, intrinsic value, materiality, responsibility and our individual and collective agency.
www.thecentralfield.com
Commissioned by South Dublin County Council In Context 4 In Our Time www.incontext4.ie
