Deirdre O'Mahony

Artist Bio

Deirdre O’Mahony has an impressive 30 year track record in making work across sculpture, painting, installation and participatory projects. At the centre of this work is her interest in the politics of landscape, rural/urban relationships, rural sustainability and food security. She has investigated the political ecology of rural places through public engagement, exhibitions, critical writing, and cultural production. From setting up community spaces amongst a charged local conflict to her large-scale paintings produced by tracing the shadows of boulders on Mullaghmore Mountain in the Burren National Park, she deftly considers the role of art in bringing together diverse communities, alternate forms of knowledge, embracing art as a critical space to help us see things differently.

Her most notable and recent exhibitions include the Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art, Trinity Collage Dublin (2024) and Butler Gallery, Kilkenny. (2022) O’Mahony has been awarded Arts Council of Ireland Project Awards (2021/2023/2024), Bursary Awards (2024/2023/2022), the Irish American Cultural Institute Prize (2018) and a Pollock-Krasner Fellowship (1995). Her work is in the Arts Council of Ireland and the Irish Museum of Modern Art collections as well as public and private collections. Academic awards include St Martins School of Art, London, (BA); Crawford College, Cork (MRes.) and the University of Brighton (PhD).

Artist Statement

My practice explores how our identity is shaped by physical objects and environments, encompassing themes of memory, play, our imagination, and the subconscious. Focusing on the domestic environment, its ornamental, decorative, and the functional, my interest lies in exploring the significant roles that such objects can play in life as both carriers and repositories of meaning.  

Evocative Objects and Familiar Unknown are two series inspired by the solitude of the rural Irish countryside in Wicklow, and my grandmother’s eclectic Georgian house. These assemblages manifested as surreal hybrid objects, referencing the visual environments of my childhood. The work is intended to be playful and evocative, engaging the viewer with a sense of familiarity and wonder. 

In 2020 I was invited by the OPW  and Dutch art historian / curator Hélène Bremer to make new work in response to the Italian architect and printmaker, Giovanni Piranesi, for an exhibition at Dublin Castle in 2022, For the Love of the Master : 20 Artists fascinated with Piranesi.

I set about building a fictional archive of architectural elements, exploring a new language of form through compositions of various ceramic components, suggesting remnants of abandoned classical architecture:  Fragments from an Imaginary Landscape.

Website: www.deirdre-omahony.ie

Membership: Backwater Artists Network