Expulsion, solo exhibition, 2020-21
Shot in part at Crawford Art Gallery, Expulsion (30mins) moves between a fictional Queer State, archival footage of queer activists, a guided meditation to expunge internalised homophobia/transphobia, and nocturnal rituals. As the ideals of queerness in the state are confronted with the respectability politics of homonormativity and capitalism, the viewer is asked to reconsider each characters’ motivations as they progress through ethically ambiguous scenes. Expulsion incorporates archival footage of Joan Jett Blakk, the drag persona of Terence Smith, who ran for mayor of Chicago in 1991 and for president in the USA in 1992 on the ticket of the Queer Nation party.
Read essay by Professor Karl Schoonover, published by the Crawford Art Gallery.
Retelling: Dr. James Miranda Barry and John Joseph Danson (3mins), filmed on location in the Crawford Art Gallery in response to the museum’s collection. It is installed with the artist James Barry’s painting Portrait of James Barry and Edmund Burke in the characters of Ulysses and his companion fleeing from the Cave of Polyphemus.
James Barry (1741 – 1806) was an artist born in Cork, the sale of some of his paintings supported the studies of James Barry’s nephew, Dr James Barry. Dr James Barry went on to become a surgeon and the fourth doctor to successfully accomplish a C-section with both the mother and child surviving (Haefele-Thomas, 2019). About Dr James Barry, Caoimhín writes: “He is written about as if he was a woman who masqueraded as a man in order to achieve an education and career that was not accessible for women at the time. However, being inaccurately hailed as ‘Britain’s first female physician’ ignores his transgender identity. Instead, he was the first trans physician.”
Far from the Reach of the Sun, a film set in a near-future where a government-approved drug can alter your sexuality reflects on links between gay conversion therapy, the role of organized religion in Western society and internalized homophobia.
Dusting (4 minutes & 35mm photographs, 2012 & 2020) a monotonous domestic task, becomes the basis of a grotesque display of desire as years of dust and dirt are licked off the windows of an abandoned building.
In conversation with Kathleen Soriano, online interview produced for the Crawford.