Mel is an artist and writer who looks (mostly) at place, memory and speculative futures. Through narrative and modelmaking, she builds speculative landscapes which hinge on the concept of palimpsests. A palimpsest here can refer to an object that bears visible traces of its earlier form, such as a manuscript written over. Janet Donohoe, in Remembering Places, applies this term to landscapes as a tool to think through the overlapping and layered nature of place. Mel uses this notion to research the city, ownership, housing, vacancy and land. As part of the Data Stories project she shared artworks and research in Allegories of the Metropolis at BETA Festival and the workshop on Vacancy, Occupation and Commoning at Trinity College (both in 2024) and will show new work in Liquid Urbanities at the LAB Gallery in 2025, curated by Clara McSweeney.
In 2023, Mel completed her MA in Art and Research Collaboration at IADT, continuing on to join the teaching staff as a tutor in digital fabrication and visualisation. She has shown and performed work across Ireland and the UK, including the LAB Gallery, Barnavave, UCC, and Signal Film & Media. Recent collaborative group projects include themes of queer ecologies (the Balcony Project at Project Arts Centre), art and the city (Fringe Was Here at Dublin Fringe) and archiving and forgetting (Memory, Loss at BASE). In 2020 Mel was awarded Young Cumbrian Artist of the Year and won second place in the practitioner category in the RIBA Eyeline Awards in 2021. Her artworks are held in the collections of the Bodleian Library (Oxford) and, more importantly, on the walls and bookshelves of strangers and friends.
In 2023, Mel completed her MA in Art and Research Collaboration at IADT, continuing on to join the teaching staff as a tutor in digital fabrication and visualisation. She has shown and performed work across Ireland and the UK, including the LAB Gallery, Barnavave, UCC, and Signal Film & Media. Recent collaborative group projects include themes of queer ecologies (the Balcony Project at Project Arts Centre), art and the city (Fringe Was Here at Dublin Fringe) and archiving and forgetting (Memory, Loss at BASE). In 2020 Mel was awarded Young Cumbrian Artist of the Year and won second place in the practitioner category in the RIBA Eyeline Awards in 2021. Her artworks are held in the collections of the Bodleian Library (Oxford) and, more importantly, on the walls and bookshelves of strangers and friends.
Through a continuing collaboration with Núria Rovira Terradas (a TIDAL artist too), Mel will be writing a narrative that examines places caught between existence -locked in loops of planning – through a weaving speculative story of a life lived around the bay. This will build in steady conversation over the year informing – and in response to – an installation created by Núria , to be shown together at Signal in December.
