Brain Worms
Brain Worms explores the ways in which popular culture informs our understanding of the world. It began with an interest in the cultural references we accumulate over time, and the ways in which these references become shortcuts for understanding things we might not have encountered ourselves. For example, having seen The Simpsons parody of The Shining years before watching the original film, my understanding of Kubrick’s movie was initially an odd amalgamation of scenes, jokes and references from both. Cartoons, films, television, music, memes and viral videos all contribute to a kind of collective cultural knowledge, where one reference leads to another, and where our understanding of something is often built from fragments of things we have seen, heard or half-remembered.
Bringing together drawing, digital collage, found imagery and installation, the work assembles these fragments into a loose visual language of recurring characters, motifs and ideas.
The series developed across three iterations: Brain Worms at the Lord Mayor’s Pavilion, Cork, and Brain Worms: Redux at 126 Artist-Run Gallery, Galway, both in 2021, followed by a residency at PADA Studios, Lisbon, in 2022. Each iteration offered a different way of approaching the material. Redux revisited the original exhibition in a more provisional, unfinished form, allowing drawings, collages and loose ideas to take the place of more resolved works. At PADA, the recurring characters and motifs in the work were further developed through theatrical structures and an increased interest in the relationship between performer and audience, and public and private space.
Brain Worms: Redux, 2021, installation view at 126 Gallery, Galway, Ireland.
