🔸🔹🔸CURRENT EXHIBITION: SCIENTIFIC ARTS🔸🔹🔸
Runs: April 12th - 21st 2024
Closing Event: Sunday 21st of April 2024 at 1pm
At: The University of Galway Art Gallery, The Quadrangle, University Road, Galway, Ireland
I am delighted to take part in the Scientific Arts Exhibition at the University of Galway Art Gallery. which opened last Friday the 12th of April. There is really fantastic work on display which combines psychological research, scientific exploration and artistic insight. The result is a show which contains works that are both intellectually engaging and deeply personal; and which are conveyed through a varied mix of traditional artistic and contemporary technological means.
It runs for the rest of the week.
So if you are in Galway City, then catch it if you can
Take note there will be a closing event at the gallery on Sunday the 21st of April at 1pm.
A huge thanks to Kate Hodmon & Cheryl Kelly-Murphy for all your curation and installation skills.
For more from the Univeristy of Galway's Scientific Arts Lab visit:
https://www.instagram.com/scientificartslab/
🔸New Research: Scientific Arts: Studying How the Brain Perceives the World Through Creative Practice.🔸
I am delighted to begin a new strand of research in my art practice this evening. I have been accepted onto a new University of Galway Micro - Credential course entitled “Scientific Arts: Studying How the Brain Perceives the World Through Creative Practice”. This course will combine Art Practice with Psychology two of my major interests. I am excited to meet the other students and to see where this course takes us.
Micro-Credentials are relatively new endeavours in the academic sphere. They are structured to provide people with an opportunity to pursue short-term, flexible, accredited courses so that they may have an introduction to a new field of expertise, to extend upon a previous area of learning, or to bridge two fields/professions. I enjoy this ethos as I have always found it useful to have more than one lens with which to look at the world.
Here is more about the course from the organizers:
”Scientific Arts is an interdisciplinary module in which learners will learn how the brain perceives the world through the senses and builds predictive models of our environments, how this shapes our actions and interactions with objects and other agents. Learners and illustrate their learning through creative practices, including artistic and technological media. Learners will participate in lectures, seminars, and arts and creative technology workshops.
What you'll learn:
How the brain works, the cognitive science of perception, and how this influences how we interact with the world. You will be able to research a theme within this topic and express that learning through newly acquired artistic and technological skills.Completing this project will demonstrate the ability to manage their time, orally communicate their knowledge, and exhibit their work.”
For more about this Micro-Credential click here.
For more about the Micro-Credentials available in Ireland click here.
New Digital Collage - When A Child Is Faced With An Impossible Task
When A Child Is Faced With An Impossible Task is a Digtal Collage that struggles to manage in the world of the adult. Sometimes in life children can end up being raised into inappropriate positions of adult responsibility. In the terms of Family Systems Theory we can say that the child has been subsumed into their family’s parental/spousal subsystem (In other words they have been misplaced into the role of a parent/spouse). Sometimes a child may even reverse roles entirely with their own parent (s) in order to act as a caregiver. This process is known as emotional parentification, and the strain of it can create deep feelings of confusion, sadness, lostness, powerlessness and isolation as the child struggles to handle emotional roles and tasks for which they are simply unequipped.
An almost inevitable result of this process is the loss of their childhood, as it is laid aside to make room for the excessive adult responsibility that they are now faced with. This gargantuan task of negotiating the adult world without the benefit of sufficient maturity or experience may cause the child to manage by adopting ridged roles of excessive care giving and an unrealistic sense of over-responsibility for the people and situations that surround them. A child can therefore carry an internal attitude that they must always put the needs of others before their own, and that they are solely responsible for negative outcomes in life. This exhausting and self-sacrificing attitude may then follow them into later life, ironically stunting their own growth to maturity in adulthood. Heavy stuff, so don’t forget to look after yourself and to get out and play.
New Digital Collage - Resonant Empathy
Part Of The Inner Space Series. Resonant Empathy is a Digital Collage which reverbrates like a tuning fork with the experiences of another and chimes a deeply resonant note within. Empathy is a natural capacity we share that enables us to feel into and understand the pains, trials, tribulations and joys of our common humanity. We get to the heart of a matter by opening up, listening attentively and picking up that which occurs in each other; as well as in the space between us. By practicing Empathy we learn to lay aside our own predjudices, predilictions and agendas in service of entering into the lived experiences of another person, stepping into their shoes and seeing the world from their eyes.
When we meet at this deeper level, we reach out and bridge the gaps between one and other; We can form powerful bonds, erode isolation and gain new insights, whilst providing sustenance and support to those around us. By really taking in the experiences of others, the act of empathy changes us; like a chemical reaction the interaction alters both parties, promoting growth, and deepening understanding of other people, of our own self, of how we relate, of the nature of meaning in our lives, and of the brilliance and burdens of the existences that we share.
Announcement - The Conscious Baby Program @ The Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Health (APPPAH)
I am very proud to announce that I have had my logo selected by the Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health this week in the re-branding of their Conscious Baby Program. The APPPAH carries out pioneering research in understanding how the conditions of the intrauterine environment, birth and early infancy influence human development.
Through this they gain fascinating insight into the importance of strong parental bonding experiences, attunement, communication, loving responsive attention, and how these things help to develop healthy attachment patterns, resilience, stronger immune systems, better emotional self-regulation and a deeply ingrained sense of self-worth.
At the same time deepening our understanding of what happens when pre-natal, birth or early life neglect, distress and trauma occur; how this presents in later life and this leads us to more informed and effective Psychotheraputic practices.
After all if we wish to fully understand any story we need to start at the beginning.
For anyone with little ones, working with children or an interest in Psychology, I would highly recommend checking out their resources over at:
Or the Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health’s main site at: www.birthpsychology.com
New Digital Collage - An Emergence To Consciousness
An Emergence To Consciousness is a Digital Collage which manifests into being by synthesizing meaning from our environments and experiences. Our intuition guides our focus, absorbing some information and highlighting some aspects of our experience and editing out other elements based on our immediate situation; but also through the most intimate elements of ourselves, our personal histories, our values, our interests, our agendas, our vices, our pleasures, our hates and our loves. A subtle and powerful process of questioning. What feels pertinent? What feels meaningful? What feels right?
In Gestalt psychology we describe this process as a figure (That is something of meaning, needing our attention) which emerges from the background of our experience, to be engaged with and then when the necessary change comes about the figure of our focus fades into the background again, altering it to in the process. There is a cycle to our experience of the world, awareness, engagement, creative enterprise, integration and finally a return to rest, making space for a new figure to emerge into awareness.