Room Innate presents a new body of work by artist Danny Foley, developed through the Backwater Artists Group Moving Image Bursary, awarded to Foley in 2025.

 

This installation explores artistic play as a creative strategy for negotiating the self as shapeshifting, multifaceted, and inherently vulnerable. The show consists of black-and-white paintings on canvas, a stop-motion video, re-edited archival footage from his childhood, and small-scale clay sculptures. Through making, experimentation, and repetition, Foley uses these processes as a way to engage with uncertainty, doubt, and ambiguity rather than seeking to resolve them.

 

These works emerged from a response to contemporary life, where exposure to competing demands, digital platforms, perfectionism, and social conduct can create a sense of internal conflict and paralysis. Adapting to these can often result in suppressing aspects of ourselves that may be perceived as negative or socially unacceptable. Drawing on Carl Jung’s concept of the “shadow self”, Room Innate examines the elements of identity that are often denied, repressed, or concealed.

 

Making reference to the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur in the Labyrinth, where the Minotaur traditionally represents the unconscious or perceived flaws of the self, Foley looks behind the framework of this narrative. The figures depicted in this exhibition appear unfinished, faint, and already wounded. Rather than presenting a monster to be destroyed, these forms suggest that these parts of ourselves may require a different kind of encounter.

 

While presenting a fractured and psychological representation of human experience, Foley’s work also considers self-discovery from an open approach to making art. The exhibition challenges the notion of eliminating imperfections, but acknowledges them. By questioning ideals of self-correction in the contemporary world, Room Innate embraces contradiction and incompleteness as essential to being in the world.

 

 

Danny Foley is Cork based artist and studio-holder at Backwater Artists Group. He holds a BA First-Class Honours Degree in Fine Art from MTU Crawford College of Art and Design (2025). His art practice spans drawing, painting, moving-image, and installation. Informed by archival footage from his childhood, he explores identity through “the shapeshifter” as both an artistic approach and conceptual framework across mythological, ecological, and personal perspectives. Recent solo shows include Room Innate (Studio 12, Cork) and Beyond Eye Sea (Lavit Gallery, Cork). Recent group shows include Shapeshifting (GOMA, Waterford), Cross-Pollinate (Clancy Quay Studios, Dublin), and Earth (James Barry Exhibition Centre, Cork). His work has been featured in the Irish Examiner and Irish Arts Review. Awards include Student of the Year, Best Thesis Prize, Cork City Council, Cork County Council, Eli Lilly, and MTU Arts Office Purchase Prizes, which acquired his works for their art collections.

 

The Moving Image Bursary Award is awarded to a graduating moving image artist from MTU Crawford College of Art & Design, who demonstrates talent and ambition in their work practice. The Bursary provides a professional level of support to the graduate including a solo exhibition opportunity in our Studio 12 exhibition/project space, mentorship, curatorial and technical support, artists fee and PR support. It assists the graduate in the transition from student to professionally practicing artist.