Majella clancy’s practice is hybrid in its approach encompassing painting, printmaking and collage. It takes as its starting point found ephemera and material references that come out of an Irish rural experience and in particular their relationship to ideas of home and gendered space.
ARTIST BIO
Majella Clancy is an artist based in Belfast. In 2012 she completed a practice-led PhD that examined ideas of gendered space through paint and print practice at Ulster University. Recent exhibitions include: InTouch, Onboards Biennale, Antwerp (2023), Structure, QSS Gallery, Belfast (2022), IMPACT 12, International Printmaking Conference, Bristol (2022), Future Forward, curated by Jane Morrow, MART Dublin and QSS Gallery, Belfast (2022). Her paper ‘The Thinking I: Self, Materiality and Paint Practice’ will be published in Teaching Painting: A Publication, Cambridge Scholar, UK, (2023). Her work is held in public and private collections including, Department of Finance NI, Queens University Belfast, Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Ulster University Permanent Collection. She is a lecturer in Painting at Ulster University, Belfast.
Of A Body VI, 2023, Majella Clancy, 35cm x 48cm, Monotype Screenprint on Munken Smooth (GF Smith Paper).
Top Left: Fold, 2023, Majella Clancy, 45cm x 64cm, Screenprint on Munken Smooth (GF Smith Paper) , Edition 1/1.
Clancy’s work folds in ideas of the gendered body and motherhood where bodily fragments emerge, interact and dissolve within the fragmented spaces. Shadow, touch and tactility become important within the work where other questions emerge, namely what does it mean to inhabit a body?
The Act, The Idea and The Thing, (detail), Collage, screenprint, monoprint, paint, gesso, mixed media, Dimensions variable, 2019 - 2022
Of A Body IX, 2023, Majella Clancy, 32cm x 47cm, Screenprint on Munken Smooth (GF Smith Paper) , Edition 1/1.
Bearing the history of its own making, the work appears as pseudo landscapes held together by quasi-architectural fragments and semi-familiar forms. The materiality of making in the studio is held within the work where references to a stage-set or performed space is also played out.
Of A Body V, 2023, Majella Clancy, 35cm x 48cm, Monotype Screenprint on Munken Smooth (GF Smith Paper).
