Hannah Ireland

Martin was always the class clown

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“For I know I exist. But is my reality perceived in the same way as it is for those who sit next to me on a bus? Probably not.”
— H Ireland

My practice seeks to consider how relationships between the psyche, performativity and theatre align. When considering my reality, I am guided by sociologist Eving Goffman's dramaturgical approach in 'The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life', melded through a regulation of social action and systems.

A theatrical reality; an assemblage of fragmented information - these paintings echo the perplexing nature of identity clothed in a variety of marks that warp, map, and construct each figure. The indexicality of each composite is momentary. Draped, pinched, stitched; held together in a temporary permanence - the potential that is, manifests. The potentiality of what could be, hovers.

Insisting on being more than just a two-dimensional image, paintings extend off the wall as a support for their own fragility.

Materialising the emotional and performative, relationships between the psyche, social and theatrical space unfold. As deliberate or unwitting participants, we are jolted into an electric field of humming colour. We disappear behind, are exposed to, and engage with, a constant shift of felt coordinates - partially obscured and revealed from diverse points in the room.

My work composes a portrait of psycho-figuration, blurred between representation and abstraction.

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