Clodagh Emoe, We Are and Are Not, 2015.
Digital film, 12 minutes.
The Niland Collection

Clodagh Emoe is an innovative contemporary artist whose work comprises film and installation as well as experiential elements. In exploring the inter-dependence of life where everything is interconnected, Emoe creates works that explore our place in the world. Her ‘exercises’, a term she uses to describe her event based participatory works, focus on experience and perception. Emoe wishes to create instances where ideas are free-moving and ‘felt’ rather than imposed.

Central to Clodagh’s practice is the consideration of ‘the encounter’ as a condition of art and the way in which such encounters manifest through perception. Her works often involve a gathering of people in a particular location at a specific time, for example a forest at midnight, a flat due for demolition at dusk , the National Gallery of Ireland during closed hours, or a field in Sligo’s ancient landscape at sunset.

We Are and Are Not (2015), commissioned by The Model in 2015, is a film installation that plays with the dynamics of seeing and takes the teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986) as its point of departure.

Deliberately breaking a cardinal rule of film, the installation’s participants break the fourth wall and silently watch the viewer as the viewer observes them.

Clodagh was nominated for The David and Yuko Juda Foundation Award 2019.

You can find the artist on Twitter @ClodaghEmoe or check out the website www.clodaghemoe.com