Sheaneen Healy Byrne
I am a visual artist who works with lens-based and photographic media. My work takes on a storytelling element through the use of still and moving imagery. I use landscapes as an entry point to be explored and often I find the landscape to be an integral element of the topics I deal with.
I am interested in the relationships between people and place, from agricultural contexts to tales of Irish folklore. Using photography and moving image, I tell stories that span across space and time. My work often consults the past to find meaning within the present which is an essential part of my practice.
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(re)rooting
In the midst of a housing crisis, with rents soaring and the eviction ban lifted, Ireland is a country that has become uninhabitable. As a young person living at home, I cannot afford to move out so I have, like many others, decided to emigrate in search of independence and a better quality of life. (re)rooting explores the feelings, often mournful, of having to uproot oneself. Through the careful sequencing of images from the farmland which has been in my family for generations, I am depicting the physical manifestations of my roots on home soil. By moving abroad, I am leaving behind a crucial part of my identity - my home and the farm I grew up on. Weaving these photographic fragments together is a process of abstraction, a way of exploring how it will be for me, temporally and spatially, in a new and unfamiliar landscape.