About / Contact | Emma Brennan Artist

C O N T A C T

B I O G R A P H Y

Emma Brennan is an interdisciplinary artist who works predominantly in performative practices to include multi-media installation, moving image and collaborative processes. Based between Belfast and Dublin she is a former Co-Director and Chairperson at Catalyst Arts, Belfast and a current studio member of PS2 Studios Belfast. She was chosen as one of the BBeyond performance collective’s new commissioned artists of 2021 and remains an active member of the collective. She has performed as part of the multiple exhibitions and festivals locally and internationally including the Belfast International Festival of Performance Art (BIFPA), the Live Art Biennial, FIX21, as part of Black Kit Performance Archive in Cologne, Livestock Dublin, Dublin live art festival, on residency at Live Art Ireland and more. In December 2021, Brennan performed in collaboration with singer Meabh Muir to ring in the solstice as part of Array Collective’s Turner Prize winning exhibition The Druthaibs Ball. Recent projects include a solo show GIRLÍN at PS2 gallery space, February 2023, exhibiting work as part of Alice Maher’s show Vox Hybrida at the Golden Thread Gallery in February 2023, on residency at Haihatus in Joutsa, Finland in March 2023, her Mag Mell banner and performance as part of the Cavan Arts Festival as invited by Array Collective and the launch of the publication Sam’s Eden at MAC Belfast, May 2023. Upcoming projects include performing at the Ulster Museum to close Array Collective’s run of The Druthaibs Ball, her work will be included in Manchan Magan’s upcoming book , Brille Bhreaille - to be published in October 2023 and a solo show in early 2024 at Belfast Exposed gallery.

S T A T E M E N T

The core of my practice is occupied with the cyclical processes of breathing/living and is formed upon the four pillars of; gestation, birth, life and death. My practice is moving towards a body of work specific to how these pillars relate to the female form. I am thinking about this within the context of Ireland (both currently and historically) and then more intimately where I stand amongst it, not only as artist and creator but also as a queer, Irish, female-identifying, living/breathing being.

I am concerned with finding balance within the contradictions of the transient and the fixed. Through process-based methods I explore the space between the two, where magic and ritual, landscape and the body all fold in on one another. My current research concerns feminist readings of a Pagan Ireland, exploring the ritualistic, mythological and traditional practices through the pillars outlined above. By comparing these practices I hope to capture the physicality of the intangible, attempting to visualise the
weights of intimacy and palpable tensions between living things.