A Kick Up The Arts #5 – Emma Finucane

THE ARTIST by The Artist: Emma Finucane
I develop artwork through dialogue, process based, participatory and collaborative practice. I investigate the way we connect and communicate with others and ultimately how it contributes to the quality of our lives.

I am currently Artist in Residence in UCD College of Health Sciences where I am a lead investigator on a research team with a midwifery lecturer, Dr. Maria Healy (UCD), and midwife, Teresa McCreery, based at the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street.

Together we are working on the research initiative: an interpretive phenomenological study: illuminating childbirth experiences of women attending a midwife-led service via visual art works. Insights from this research will highlight women’s lived experiences of childbirth via visual artworks and academic publications. The final artworks will be included in the UCD Health Sciences Library in book format as an educational tool alongside academic books.

INFLUENCES
There are so many artists I want to tell you about I don’t know where to start.

Celebration of Labour by Pauline Cummins (mural)
This is Pauline, painting her mural in 1984 outside The National Maternity Hospital, Dublin, as part of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art. Having identified a lack of positive birth images in our culture, she made a painting called Celebration The Beginning of Labour. She approached the NMH to make the painting into a mural in the courtyard in Holles Street. This mural shows two very big women carrying a third woman. You can listen to Pauline talking about her work in Holles Street here.

Pauline Cummins is an artist whose work explores the human condition from a feminist perspective. Her interest lies in performance and video work where she examines identity, gender and socio-cultural relations connected to different communities in society. Her examination of specific locations questions how the self is constituted and how people act within a group either chosen or determined in social situations, such as work, education, prison, leisure time, or within the basic structure of the family.

Video still from Sleep by Alice Maher (2009)
I love this video piece, this is a still from the video here.

Alice Maher is an artist who makes art of the kind that engages people who are usually not very interested in art, as well as those who are. It’s a rare ability to be able to communicate equally with such diverse audiences. Her work touches on a wide range of subjects, often reprising mythic or folk narratives, and involves a range of media including drawing, sculpture, print, installation, photography, animation and film.

Aquatica 2014 by Janaina Tschape (2014)
Janaina makes the most beautiful images that give you the sensation of being in a dream world. There is always room for a bit of that, no?

Janaina Tschäpe explores themes of the body and landscape, sex, death, renewal and transformation in paintings, drawings, photographs and video installations. To experience Tschäpe’s work is to swim through universes of polymorphous landscapes amongst embryonic forms, ambiguous characters and exotic botanical life. You can see more images here.

MY WORK

Installation View 2015 by Emma Finucane, Welcome Disturbances, The Lab Foley Street. Wooden Shelf, A5 Invites 2015 and Satellite Clinic, Greystones, 2015 (Digital Print on Photorag, 33.1 x46.8 inches)
The wooden shelf holds a stack of A5 invites, The audience is invited to take these away.
The digital print is a photograph of the recruitment poster that has been placed in satellite clinics for the NMH Communlty Midwives with the aim of recruiting participants for a research initiative investigating birth experience. Here I am presenting the project as part of Welcome Disturbances and using the gallery to recruit as well as the clinics.

For Roseanne by Emma Finucane (Screen Print on Fabriano, aprox, 16.5 x 21.5 inches, 2013)
For Rosanne is one of the images I made as part of a per cent for art commission in Carlow, you can find out more about this project here.

Expunction, Lambda Print, aprox, 27 x 18.9 inches, 2007
This image is from a body of work made by hanging a life size screen print on acetate and documenting it as the rain washed the figure away.
There is also a video piece. You can see the rest of the images and video here.

Biog:
Emma studied Fine Art in NCAD where she received a first class honors degree in 1997 and a MFA in 2006. In 2014 she was awarded a place on the Arts and Health creative practitioner panel for DLR County Council to engage with local HSE funded residential and day care facilities. In 2013, she completed a public art commission for Carlow County Council, was awarded a residency in the College of Science UCD, and appointed to the Board of Directors in Black Church Print Studio. From 2011 to date she continues to work on an interdisciplinary team of arts and health professionals to establish the Creative Well Community Art College in Kildare. Emma has been invited to present at many seminars and symposia including Re-Imagining Birth, UCD School of Humanities 2013, Art and Health Commission, Panel Presentation and Discussion VISUAL Carlow 2013, Sharing Space, Ballyfermot Senior Colllege 2010, and NCAD Art and Learning Communities 2006. She is a founding member of Outpost Studios, Bray, Co.Wicklow, and a member of the artist collective RAFT.

Emma has been commissioned and supported by the Arts Council Ireland, CREATE, Wicklow, Carlow and Kildare County Councils, The Open Window Project, and Pfizer Ireland. Her work has been shown in Dublin, Belfast, Germany, U.K, L.A. and Copenhagen, and can be found in many private and public collections including OPW, AIB, DIT, and UCD.