Contemporary urban street life is full of distinctive characters and personalities. In my work I imagine the hidden everyday narratives of these individuals, the inspiration for my ongoing graphic series “Mortal Engines”. 

“Mortal Engines” is a comic apologia for the humans which surround and interact with us and the marks they make on the world, from the architecture of a skyline to the tagging on a storefront.  It’s a celebration of the local, the small-scale, the eccentric and the down-right ordinary. It’s also a search for the humour of the everyday.

A key element of my work is the creation of a more interactive connection between the viewer and the art. While I can defer to the importance of the ‘white cube,’ I am more concerned with creating a strong feeling of character and place, allowing my diverse work to be viewed as a conceptual whole.

The work is rooted in social realism, allowing a framework for exploring contemporary life in Dublin and can be viewed as an artful analogy. The series consists of ink drawings, paintings and cut-out, life-size figures with image on one side and text on the other. The paintings vary stylistically, highlighting the dissatisfaction felt by many in society through a judicious mix of paint application and technique. The text features philosophical and whimsical messages based on life in contemporary Dublin, with a focus on the more mundane problems people encounter. These are both overheard snippets of conversations as well as original content from the artist.

I incorporate graphic ideas of sequence and ongoing narrative to my installations, eliminating boundaries to create a gallery-wide situation where the audience can be engaged and fully involved.  The use of text connects my work with a graphic format, allowing the exploration of more anomalous avenues of contemporaneity.

I take inspiration from Michel Foucault’s use of the term ‘fiction’. He does not mean what he is saying is untrue, rather that his writings are constructed ‘stories’ about real people and places.