I am delighted to have received one The Arts Council of Ireland's Agility Awards. The Agility Award aims to support individual professional freelance artists and arts workers at any stage in their careers.
With this award I will be investigating a collection at the Natural History Museum of Ireland connected to Irish Naturalist Annie Massy. This archive consists of over 600 specimens of creatures that live in water. These literal bodies form a collection which is now one of the few traces of this woman’s life. When I visited the museum and spoke with the Assistant Keeper I learned that specimens are not permanently preserved, but rather the chemicals used only slow down the process of decay. So this is a slowly dying archive of physical knowledge.
From this experience, and building on research to date, I will create a series of sculptures in glass which speak to the concept the archive as a site of knowledge and uncertainty.
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