inter_site
Collective Bio
inter_site is a Cork based artist collective established by Pádraic Barrett, Deirdre Breen, Aoife Claffey and Kate McElroy. They graduated together from the MA in Art and Process, Crawford College of Art and Design, MTU, 2021. Since then they have created six site-responsive exhibitions in Cork.
inter_site create interventions and exhibitions, utilising unique venues and display mechanisms responding to the precarious and ever shifting nature of our current reality. Their work responds to the current environmental, political and social climate. Each artist employs a multi-disciplinary approach responding to the specific sites they encounter, enhancing the viewer’s experience of place with an emphasis on spatial and sensory effects. The work speculates on alternative and imaginative spaces that present to the viewer embodied encounters and altered viewpoints. They aim to embed art into the fabric of the everyday, using art as a tool to probe and question current societal systems and structures of power. They are interested in peripheral and non-traditional art spaces which can open up new ways of considering the surrounding environment and re-imagine our present moment.
Artist Bios & Statement
Pádraic Barrett
Biography
Pádraic Barrett is an interdisciplinary Irish artist who works across performance, film, and installation to explore contemporary issues such as techno-capitalism, surveillance, and human agency. Originally from Kerry and based in Cork, he holds an MA in Art and Process (2021) and a BA in Fine Art (2019) from the Crawford College of Art and Design. His practice integrates sculptural installations, performance-based media, and collaborative methodologies to critically engage with societal structures.
Barrett’s work has been exhibited internationally, with recent solo shows including Machination at the Municipal Corporation of Culture of San Joaquin in Santiago, Chile (2023) and The Engineering of Consent II at The Marina Warehouse in Cork (2021). His recent projects include ⌥ertigo, A Crescendo (2025), funded by the Arts Council of Ireland Project Award, and Error: /Undefined (2023), presented as part of Pallas Projects’ Artist-Initiated Projects. Barrett is also a founding member of inter_site, an artist collective focused on site-responsive and collaborative practice. He has exhibited widely across Ireland, the UK, Germany, and Portugal in both solo and group exhibitions.
A recipient of multiple awards from the Arts Council of Ireland and Cork City Council, Barrett has participated in international residencies at GlogauAIR in Berlin and PADA Studios in Lisbon. His work has been featured in public art festivals and gallery settings, gaining recognition for its innovative use of space and narrative. In addition, Barrett shares his insights through visiting lectures at institutions like the Crawford College of Art and Design, engaging students in dialogue about art’s role in sociopolitical critique.
Statement
Pádraic Barrett is an Irish contemporary artist whose interdisciplinary practice spans performance, film, and installation. His work explores the complex intersections between capitalism, technology, and ecological systems, with a particular focus on how these forces affect the human body and the environment. Barrett’s art frequently incorporates elements of surrealism, blending organic and artificial forms to question the boundaries of human and machine influence. His works often recontextualize the body, particularly the queer body, as part of a broader landscape that speaks to resilience, adaptation, and alternative ways of existing within a neoliberal, tech-driven world. His practice is known for immersive and confrontational techniques that challenge viewers to reflect on their roles within societal systems.
Instagram @padraicbarrettstudio
Kate McElroy
Biography
Kate McElroy is an Irish artist who creates dynamic constellations of work through a multidisciplinary, research-led, and site-responsive practice. She graduated with a First Class Honours Master’s Degree in Art and Process from MTU Crawford College of Art and Design in 2021.
Recent exhibitions in 2025 include two solo exhibitions: An Absence, An Edge at TRISKEL SAMPLE project space, Triskel Arts Centre and Restructuring Elements at The Crane Visual, The Firkin Crane, Cork. She exhibited in and co-produced Vertigo: A Crescendo at Cork County Hall, supported by an Arts Council Project Award. National exhibitions include Liquid Urbanism at The LAB Gallery, Dublin, Error: /Undefined at Pallas Projects, Dublin, and And If We Observe the Present at Catalyst Arts, Belfast. Internationally, her work has been exhibited in Peru, Portugal, London, Berlin, and India.
She undertook a residency at Correlación Contemporánea in the Amazon, Peru, in 2025. Previous residencies include Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre (2020–2025), GlogauAIR, Berlin (2024), and PADA, Portugal (2022). She is a co-founder of the artist collective inter_site, who have produced seven site-responsive exhibitions across Cork and recently launched a publication documenting their work.
Kate McElroy is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and Cork City Council. Upcoming residencies include an Arts Council–funded research residency at Sirius Arts Centre in 2026.
Statement
My practice explores how systems of power shape environments tracing lines between the political, social, and ecological. Through research, documentation, and collecting from specific sites, I build a foundation for immersive and sculptural environments that hold tension between past, present, and speculative futures.
I create spatial interventions that exist in a space between construction and destruction highlighting the current moment of environmental precarity. I compose dynamic constellations of work, interplaying installation, sculpture, spoken word/sound composition, moving image, and expanded photography which mirror places in flux.
I capture and construct altering environments, in-between and altered spaces that echo political and ecological conditions. I create affective and atmospheric installations that invite reflection on our current moment while holding space for transformation where the interstitial emerges as a space for potentiality.
Instagram @kate_mcelroy_
Aoife Claffey
Biography
Aoife Claffey is an installation artist from Cork who graduated with First Class Honours in both her MA: Art and Process (2020) and BA in Fine Art (2019) from MTU Crawford College of Art and Design. After her Degree Show, she was awarded six awards and three residencies. She is a member of both Sample Studios and Cork Printmakers. Her first major solo show was ‘Mystical Confessions’ in St Lukes, Cork in 2021. Other exhibitions include a solo exhibitions ‘8’ in Cork Airport 2021 and ‘Our Town’ in The Band Stand in Carrigaline Cork for Culture Night 2023.
She 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. Aoife has been supported by Arts Council Agility Awards, Arts Council Project Award, and a Cork County Council Artist Bursary. Upcoming residencies include the Fish Factory Creative Centre of Stöðvarfjörðu in April 2024, an online GlogauAIR residency in Berlin 2024 and past include PADA, Portugal 2022 and Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre, 2022.
Statement
My work explores human sensory perception in provisional spaces and creates installations combining projection film, printmaking, found objects and sound. Physiological and psychological tensions between chaos and order are encouraged in my work both during the making, and within the work, to evoke immersive uncanny effects or altered cognitive states. My installations encompass notions of unpredictability, fragility and movement. My installations are often controlled by the viewers participation with the artwork. Shadows may alternate in intensity and scale passing throughout a collaboration adapting and giving
awareness of how one can affect an environment. The work investigates subtly destabilising yet uncanny effects with constant fluctuations which can be engaged with both in a physical but psychological manner.
Website: intersite.ie
Membership: Studio 
