Biography
Isobel O’Donovan is an Irish artist and writer currently based in North Yorkshire. She obtained a First Class degree from the Glasgow School of Art in 2020 in Sculpture and Environmental Art and an Mlitt in Creative Writing from the Univesity of Glasgow in 2022. She currently employed as a Community Curator at the Museum of North Craven Life, whilst continuing to develop her practice.
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Artist Statement
My practice attempts to be a space where absence can be contained and examined. This often feels like I am trying to describe a body that is just out of sight. To do this I try to highlight connections between ephemeral by-products of embodiment such as breath, dreams, memories and language. Resultant works contain absence at their core - taking the form of, for example, an empty bed or a departing butterfly. I hope that this agitation between what is physically present and what is suggested to have just departed the scene allows viewers to consider their own embodiment and experience of time in their own lives. I work across multiple media - sculpture, video, drawing, family archival material, and writing - often incorporating several media into one work. Absence, coupled with this multiplicity of forms attempts to describe how dreams, memory, and embodiment are sprawling and intangible - always just out of reach of language. In absenting a fixed body from these investigations I hope to make space for whatever ghosts the viewer may bring to the work.
Isobel O’Donovan