Leanne Finnegan

Leanne Finnegan

Visual Artist
Based in Dublin, IE

Contact:
leanneof@hotmail.com

Bio

My name is Leanne Finnegan (b.1998) and I am based in Dublin, Ireland.

My work often explores the appearance of the sacred in post-modernity, recontextualizing images to create playful dialogues that serve as antidotes to feelings of alienation and disconnection. In my practice I consider the ‘pain of becoming a subject’ and the desire to dissolve into something more real and less isolated than the individual. I am interested in how we can take respite from our solitude through Poetic Imagery, the Religious Imaginary and Erotiscim.

Interests

Education

2018-2022 IADT, Dún Laoghaire — First Class Honours BA Art
2017 O'Fiaich Institute of Further Education, Dundalk — Level 5 Graphic Design

Residencies

2023 Culterim, Dahlewitz, Germany
2023 Segotia, Dublin, Ireland [Online]
2022 Pilotenkueche, Leipzig, Germany

Awards

2024 Agility Award Arts Council Ireland
2023 Agility Award Arts Council Ireland
2023 Emerging Artist Louth Arts Council 2022 RDS Visual Art Awards (Longlist)
2022 Ormound Graduate Award (Runner up)
2022 RDS Visual Arts Awards (Long Listed)

Talks

Ormound Graduate Talks, [Online]

Press

2022 Leanne Finnegan: Spiritual Voids

Exhibitions

2024 Members Exhibition, Daylight, Dublin, Ireland
2024 BKB Studio Artists Exhibition, BKB Studios, Dublin, Ireland
2023 Luftwurzeln, Culterim, Berlin, Germany
2023 LUGHNASA, Phase Space Arts, Dublin, Ireland
2023 36. Stuttgarter Filmwinter - Festival for Expanded Media, Kunstbezirk Gallery, Stuttgart, Germany
2022 Pleasure Seed, Kunstverein Ars Avanti, Leipzig, Germany
2022 IDKF, Kulturinsel-Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany
2022 Lichtspiel des Westens, Karl-Heine Straße Leipzig, Germany
2022 Open Studio, Pilotenkueche, Leipzig, Germany
2022 Controlled Voltage 003, Complex, Dublin, Ireland
2022 IADT Graduate Show, IADT, Dublin, Ireland
2022 Propositions, IADT, Dublin, Ireland
2022 Pleasure Seed, Kunstverein Ars Avanti, Leipzig, Germany
2022 IDKF, Kulturinsel-Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany
2022 Lichtspiel des Westens, Karl-Heine Straße Leipzig, Germany
2022 Open Studio, Pilotenkueche, Leipzig, Germany
2022 Controlled Voltage 003, Complex, Dublin, Ireland
2022 IADT Graduate Show, IADT, Dublin, Ireland
2022 Propositions, IADT, Dublin, Ireland
2020 Open Submission, Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda, Ireland
2019 Place Project, IMMA, Dublin, Ireland

Field Trip (2024) Video, 05:29

In Field Trip, you stumble into an alternative world. This world dances between the digital and the natural, the disconnected and the sincere. Never managing to adequately represent either. In this world you are being led by an omnipresent voice. This character presents to you an alternative way of living. The work is interested in reification and exploring disconnection and spiritual poverty. In this piece contemporary desire and purpose are considered through the lens of different modes of socialization. Allowing for speculation around a counter libido outside of the confines of capitalist and consumerist culture. The work toys with catharsis through collectivism, movement and ritual.

Hadewijch (2024)
Acrylic on Canvas 15cm x 20cm

Keepsake (2023)
Clay, Found Drawer, Found Silk, Masking Tape, White hair
30cmX19cmX8cm

Where The Ceiling Meets The Floor (2024) Video, 02:52

Where The Ceiling Meets The Floor features a group of girls traditional Irish dancing. Their silhouettes are diluted in a pale colour field. In this work the potentials of deep time, collectivism and ritual movement were considered. The work is a homage to the tradition of the stone circle and its incubatory properties. The act of stepping into it and entering a space that is symbolically separate to time and place, where ritualistic practices occurred which emphasized the significance of the psychic condition.

A million holes (2024)
Archive images on Giclée Prints
84cmx35cm

Made in Plastic with love, (2022) 2 Screen Installation

These works are an account of the gestation and life of a sheep born from a synthetic womb. The pieces were generated from an AI image creating system which allows the AI to conceptualise a vision of organic life which is refracted through data, facilitating a conversation between AI, technology and ontology. In this piece the character of the sheep navigates their existential anxieties, musing on their physicality and artificiality in communication with the LED screens and AI constructions that they are born from.

This work was shown in Ars Avanti, Leipzig for Pleasure Seed.

Borderline (2021), Video, 02:43

This work was a response to the exhibition ‘Fatal Act’ In the Douglas Hyde.
The video features a young girl singing The Sam Song by The Irish Brigade, while the video tours O’Meath a village on the southern border of The Republic of Ireland. The work explores how spatially and psychologically conflict enmeshes into communities. The work is concerned with national identity and looks to how younger generations recontextualise it. Building onto its previous meanings.

Conversations (2020), Video, 01:44

Conversations studies an interaction between children. As an outsider, prompts are used to create an understanding from nothing, letting perception solely colour the interaction. It strips away bias and leaves one of many possible reflections. The complex nature of interactions is uncovered as a whole world of experience and understanding is injected into every angle of the interaction.This piece deals with perception and the factors that can influence our understanding.