Danny Foley
Artist Bio
Danny Foley is a visual artist based in Cork whose work navigates the shifting boundaries between the human and the more-than-human. Working across drawing, animation and installation, he explores the self and otherness through a lens of Irish folklore—guided by the Púca, a shapeshifting trickster spirit.
In Foley’s practice, the Púca is not merely a subject, but a method: a way of working that embraces transformation, chance, and the unknown. Drawing from archival footage of his infancy—where he is seen playing with his shadow as a double or animal other—his work considers the self as always in flux, formed through ongoing encounters with creatures, stories, places, and time. These early embodied gestures now echo through his large-scale charcoal drawings and animations, where beings shift between human, non-human, and hybrid forms.
Using charcoal, Foley renders shadowy figures that act as guides—at once familiar and uncanny. Shaped by mythic and ecological entanglements, each drawing is a threshold or a mirror, emerging intuitively through the act of mark-making, erasure, and discovery.
His animations unfold as metamorphic journeys across empty terrain—creatures transforming in and out of form, mirroring shifts in state and being. Drawing from thinkers such as David Abram, Foley’s work engages with ideas of ecological consciousness, the multiplicities of being, and disrupting human-centred hierarchies.
He holds a First-Class Honours degree from MTU Crawford College of Art and Design (2025), where he received multiple awards including the Cork Arts Society & Lavit Gallery Student of the Year Award, Backwater Artists Group Moving Image Bursary, Sample Studios Network Award and Thesis Award (2025). He received purchase prizes by the Cork City Council, Cork County Council, Eli Lilly and MTU Arts Office.
His work has been exhibited in Ireland, Hungary, and Estonia. Recent exhibitions include SPECIES (Cork and Estonia, 2025), The Tale of the Norway Spruce and the Bark Beetle (Budapest, 2024), and TWISTER (Budapest, 2024). Upcoming solo exhibitions include Lavit Gallery and Backwater Artists Group, alongside group shows at GOMA and the MTU Arts Office STEAM Exhibition.
Artist Statement
Through my visual art practice, I explore the self not as fixed, but as shaped through encounters with the other—both human and non-human. Guided by the Púca, a shapeshifting spirit from Irish folklore, I respond to archival video footage of my infancy, where I interact with my shadow as a double or animal other.
Working across drawing, painting, animation, and installation, I embrace uncertainty and chance, allowing meaning to emerge intuitively through making. This process aims to reflect the reciprocal and transformative nature of the more-than-human world we cohabit alongside all forms of life.
By reconnecting with the embodied gestures of my childhood and drawing from tales of the Púca, my work invites a multiplicity of being—fluid, relational, and always in flux. I seek to blur the boundaries between self and other, disrupting human-centred hierarchies through the perspective of the self/other as shapeshifter.
Membership: Moving Image Bursary & Backwater Artists Network 
