After the sold out success of the E-Quadrant online show by the MFA class, we are excited to nominate exhibiting student and Catalyst member Oonagh McAteer as our January Member of the Month!
Oonagh McAteer Born In County Tyrone and now living in County Down. She has been settling into her career as an artist, working on a variety of creative projects and showcasing in group exhibitions. Her artistic expression has gone through many phases over the years resulting in a highly personal approach and perspective. She is never content with standing still and is always looking for her next engaging project.
Oonagh’s practice is transitioning from working primarily with photography and found imagery towards a wider use of mixed media, bricolage and fictional storytelling. Her work may at times appear to have no clear narrative often leading to an experience of bewilderment in the viewer.
Her studio nestled under her house, in a valley in County Down, is just a stone’s throw away from a fairy fort.
For a long time, I have had a curiosity about people and their relationships with and perceptions of the truth. I am interested in how we are programmed to respond to the truth with optimism or pessimism, if at all. I may appear outwardly facetious and overly optimistic at times, when in fact I am inwardly screaming, battling with indescribable, unheard things. Maybe this is because I have been using the wrong voice or maybe because it is easier not to be heard.
Paying close attention to my local surroundings, I have developed an attentional bias towards strange, natural phenomena. This has led to me making subtle, visceral interventions in the landscape; painting mushrooms by the roadside, throwing glitter in puddles, and placing googley eyes on posts and seed heads. These simple interventions take my work directly to an audience bypassing galleries and conventional methods of showing work.
These works make tangible intramural stories, accepting the coincidental and the absurd, allowing my work to become wholeheartedly eccentric.
Photographs by Emily Esdale - @emilyesdaleart