Catriona Leahy

Catriona Leahy is an Irish artist currently based in London. Catriona earned her masters from the Royal College of Art in London in 2013, before taking up position as Lecturer in Printmaking at the University of Northampton’s Fine Art department. She now divides her time and focus between part-time teaching and her own practice.

Within much of Catriona’s work, there is an inherent interest in sites and spaces that present with an accumulation of history or that harbour or exude an energy, a kind of aura, that an embedded past generates. She is intrigued by the apparently enduring presence and stability of structures or spaces – social, physical, geographical– and the transitory and malleable nature of memory, or a moment in time, where time as well as these constructs are perpetually moving and in flux. To this end, Catriona focuses her observations on the tension that exists in these sites, a tension that manifests itself temporally, spatially and aesthetically. In doing so she challenges and undermines the boundaries that exits between the static and dynamic image by forcing them in some way to coexist. This tension is further reinforced through ostensibly immobile compositional images or installations, which are then partially broken up or fragmented. Consequently, the onus often lies with the viewer and his or her movements through the space, to activate this tension or dissonance. The viewer becomes complicit in awakening the dormant image or setting in motion a collision of times.