Under 9 Waves – Opening Thursday 21 November, 6pm

Under 9 Waves
Helen O’Shea
Thursday 21 November – Friday 20 December, 2024

Opening Times: Tuesday to Friday, 10am – 1.00pm, 2.00pm – 5.00pm.
Please call the Backwater office if you would like to view the exhibition.

Studio 12, Backwater Artists Group, Wandesford Quay, Cork, Ireland, T12 E26D

Helen O’Shea’s art practice researches the journey of waste plastics in the sea and challenges our anthropological perceptions of the deep underworld. O’Shea’s primary material is found plastic from local beaches and collected recyclables, she reimagines this harmful debris and creates creatures reminiscent of marine life. The process begins with gleaning throwaway plastics, mulling their material qualities and exploring their potential forms; it is an enquiry that is led by the trust of ‘making through doing’. O’Shea uses techniques and equipment synonymous with fibre and textile arts – the sewing machine, tacking pins, embroidery threads – and boldly takes ownership of plastic waste materials.

O’Shea’s work is an act of disobedience, treasuring discarded waste and treating it as a medium of resistance that makes a direct statement about the ecological damage it causes. The material, touched by the hand and speculatively reinterpreted, lures the capacity to respond and take responsibility. Donna Harraway talks about the futile hope of imagining a different future, free of environmental disaster, but calls for the imminent necessity to commit to the trouble of the present, to stick with it, own our current conditions rather than spiral to apocalyptic doom! There must be a drive to understand our relationship with the natural world as a multispecies alliance and a sprawling kinship.

This exhibition will include an accompanying text by Suzanne Walsh.

Curated by Rachel Botha.
Design by Models & Constructs (Adam Carr and Jamie Smyth).

Kindly supported by Cork City Council and the Arts Council, Ireland