Caoimhe Kilfeather’s new body of work combines a variety of everyday materials to create sculptures that interrupt and re-define the gallery space at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. Kilfeather’s sculptural work integrates a range of intersecting formal, spatial, material and art historical interests, whilst engaging intuitively with scale and the processes of making. She is also drawn to the idea of ‘legacy’: legacies of forms, materials, systems and methods of production and of how these things contribute to and shape our experiences of the world. Her larger sculptural works are often made within the space of exhibition, creating a specific context for other works and allowing for a moment of unveiling.

At Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Kilfeather uses sculptural work to consider the sense of being in a particular place with the things that define and occupy it. In this case, she thinks about the elements that comprise a room (rather than ‘a space’). Two dominant sculptural works redefine the boundary and the ‘hearth’ of the room in an attempt to shift the perception of the space from an ostensibly public one to a more private and subjective setting. A large oiled paper screen created specifically for the gallery will change the delineation of the space and filter the natural light. Within this environment are placed a number of other sculptural elements and wall works which make reference to domesticity and habitation. Using familiar materials in unexpected ways, this body of work treats the gallery as a place where elements of artworks are arranged and rearranged, privileged or overlooked. In this, Kilfeather is interested in how the characteristics of habit and familiarity, memory and observation, can be captured sculpturally.

Caoimhe Kilfeather studied at NCAD, Dublin (BA) and the Slade School of Fine Art, London (MA). Recent exhibitions include ‘Before it stirs the surface’, Oonagh Young Gallery (2014), ‘In The Line Of Beauty’, IMMA (2013), ‘Futures 12’, RHA, (2012), ‘Swimming in the Field’, Goethe Institute and ‘After Dark’, Mermaid Arts Centre (both 2011).

Curated by Rayne Booth