Helen is currently exhibiting in the Backwater Studio 12.  Helen's work focuses on waste plastics found in the seas and reimagines & transforms this harmful debris and creates creatures reminiscent of marine life - exceptionally sensitive & beautiful work.  Gallery space is on first floor of Backwater Artist studios, behind Lavitt gallery.

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.

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Helen O’Shea is an Irish based artist who has exhibited internationally. She has developed a practice of sculptural making that directly engages with issues of waste and recycling. Through the reuse of existing materials, she creates forms that mimic the natural world and engage our relationship to it.

After exploring Creative Textiles and Fine Art Textiles, O’Shea attained a degree in Contemporary Applied Art in 2017, and MA by Research, from MTU Crawford College of Art and Design 2021, where she focussed on new narratives for waste. Since graduating O’Shea has exhibited widely in London with Ting-Ying Gallery, as part of Collect Art Fair with DCCI, and in the Venetian Homo Faber 2022, also Maestros del Futuro in Castillo de San Jorge Seville 2023, and Révélations 2023 Paris with the World Craft Council of Europe and in Objects of Contemplation with Make Hauser & Wirth London 2024.

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Rachel Botha is a curator, her curatorial practice investigates how people perceive their social and political framework in localised contexts. She holds a BA in History of Art & Architecture (Trinity College Dublin) and a MA in Visual Culture & Critical Studies (Technological University Dublin). She was awarded the Provost’s Curatorial Fellowship at The Douglas Hyde, Trinity College Dublin, and the Emerging Curator at the Kilkenny Arts Office. She was appointed Emerging Editor of Bloomers Magazine, co-director of Catalyst Arts, Belfast, and Early Career Curator at the RCC and Glebe House & Gallery, Donegal. This year she was the Assistant Curator at the Project Arts Centre, and worked on the Venice Biennale 2024.

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Suzanne Walsh is an artist and writer working mainly with performance, audio, and text. They also publish essays, art-writing, poetry, and fiction in publications including gorse journal, Fallowmedia, Winter Papers, and Paper Visual Art Journal, as well as commissioned texts for galleries. Their practice has been supported by The Arts Council, Culture Ireland, Fire Station Artist Studios, and Temple Bar Gallery and Studios.