Deirdre O’Mahony
Born & Lives in:
Ireland
Location
- Lewers: Penrith Regional Gallery
Deirdre O’Mahony has been creating work across sculpture, painting, installation, and participatory projects for 30 years. With an interest in the politics of landscape, rural/urban relationships, farming and food security, O’Mahony has investigated the political ecology of rural places through public engagement, exhibitions, critical writing, and cultural production. From establishing community spaces amongst a charged local conflict, to creating large-scale paintings by tracing the shadows of boulders on the limestone pavement in Burren National Park (Ireland), O’Mahony deftly considers the role of art in bringing together diverse communities and alternate forms of knowledge, embracing art as a critical space to help us see things differently.
Deirdre O’Mahony
Born 1956, Ireland
Lives and works in Cork, Ireland
The Quickening 2024
single channel video, sound, looped 36 mins
Presentation at the 25th Biennale of Sydney was made possible with generous support from Culture Ireland. Originally commissioned by The Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art with generous support from The Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon through Project & Bursary Awards.
Courtesy of the artist
The sound of dung beetles and worms pushing through dirt, wind through wheat and the soft whirr of farm machinery, form the background hum in The Quickening, Deirdre O’Mahony’s study on farming, food production and consumption. The culmination of over three years of research, the film’s crescendoing libretto takes its lyrics from recorded conversations between farmers, scientists and politicians at feasts hosted by O’Mahony for an earlier project. Tackling questions around the effects of accelerating climate change, from unseasonal droughts and floods to erosion, The Quickening is a polyvocal response to some of the most urgent issues of our time.
Performed by Irish musicians, and featuring field recordings gathered on farms across the south west of Ireland, The Quickening’s rich aural landscape puts famers, soil, researchers, beetles and policymakers in concert as a singular heaving and humming ecology.