Kiera O'Toole

Artist statement

Kiera O'Toole

Cultures are renegotiated as individuals leave their place of origin, transporting notions and images of cultural identity, heritage and homeland, real or imagined, perceiving their new environments with compound eyes. Migration encompasses intrinsic histories, systems of beliefs, idealologies of landscape and environments. 

Being an Irish immigrant and artist in Australia raises questions of Irish identities within a postcolonial context where perspectives lay in the ghost of British colonialism. The studio praxis extends the personal migratory experience and explores the centrality of the Irish western landscape within Irish and Australian contexts, offering a visual response into the construction of Irish national identity. The ongoing story of ‘Irishness’ is informed by Irish and Australian narratives in their historic, current and future uses.

'Abaile' ,(Home)

Seaweed roots