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Sirius Arts Exhibition: Deirdre O’Mahony – Feeder

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7 months ago

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Deirdre O’Mahony’s practice spans film, sculpture and installation, and often involves collaborating with various informal groups and stakeholders. The artist is concerned with the politics of the rural, understood as both a territory and a way of living. Feeder is a reading room showcasing the artist’s extensive, ongoing investigation of food production under capitalism, including themes of security and sustainability. Complementing this work is a presentation of the film The Quickening (2024), which explores questions of farming and degrowth in the context of the climate crisis.

Feeder was produced for the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, in 2022. This iteration is organised by SIRIUS and curated by Miguel Amado, director, in dialogue with the artist. The Quickening was commissioned by The Douglas Hyde, Dublin, and produced with support from The Arts Council and The Douglas Hyde.EVENT

The Quickening
Screening and Q&A with Deirdre O’Mahony

SIRIUS
Saturday, 12 October
3-5pm
Free; no booking requiredPresentation of The Quickening followed by a discussion with Deirdre O’Mahony, led by Miguel Amado, around the artist’s intellectual references, her approach to questions of climate change and the methods informing the creation of the film.Accessibility Note
Our building has accessibility limitations. There are three steps to the front door and a temporary wheelchair ramp is available upon request. Our toilets are accessed via stairs and are not open to visitors. Public toilets are beside the Titanic Experience, by The Promenade.
Deirdre O’Mahony, Feeder, 2022. Installation view, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin. Photograph: Ros Kavanagh. Courtesy of the artist
Deirdre O’Mahony’s work reflects on ancestral knowledge erasure, modernisation, extractivism, utopia and the material and psychological tension between the countryside and urban areas. According to curator Georgina Jackson, of The Douglas Hyde, “For over three decades, O’Mahony has forged a path for art to bring together diverse communities … [making it] a critical space to explore the human and the more than human.”

Feeder features agricultural devices and related objects (from a trough, typically found in farm settings, to cutlery engraved with quotes from the artist’s research), books, printed matter and school desks. Of special note are the publications, amassed by the artist across a long period, which speak to ideas of generative land use, the exploitation of natural resources, alternative economic models and new ecological visions. A poster depicting selected quotes extracted from the books is also on view. These items offer philosophical and environmental insights into the current situation of, and future perspectives on, agriculture in Ireland and beyond.

According to the Royal Hibernian Academy, which hosted a version of Feeder in 2022, this work “evokes the practical nature of farming and creates a wonderful metaphor on how it fuels both our bodily requirements and our imaginations.” At SIRIUS, the display mimics the techniques used to provide livestock with nutrition, positioning the artist-gathered materials as tools for intellectual nourishment. In addition, it highlights the reading room’s role as a platform for societal and personal transformation.

The film The Quickening (2024) complements Feeder. To make it, O’Mahony organised discussions with a broad spectrum of concerned parties (from farmers to scientists to politicians), captured the conversations that took place and, with the writer Joanna Walsh, rearranged them as a libretto that is sung as a voice-over. The imagery they accompany combines expansive views of the Irish landscape with close-ups of soil ecologies, recording and amplifying the minute details of insects and microcosms. The film meditates on both industrialised agricultural activity and the centrality of land to human, animal and insect life.


Deidre O’Mahony is an artist based in Cork City, Ireland. Recent commissions and solo shows include The Quickening, The Douglas Hyde, Dublin (2024); Eat Food Policy, Kunstverein Aughrim, Co. Wicklow (2023); and Sustainment Experiments, Butler Gallery, Kilkenny (2022). Her work was also featured in EVA International(2021, 2023) and Gangwon International Triennale, South Korea (2021). among other exhibitions. Her work is in the collections of the Arts Council and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.
Deirdre O’Mahony, The Quickening (production still), 2023. Photograph: Tom Flanagan. Courtesy of the artist
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