Research | Residencies
Commissioned by the Alfred Kordelin Foundation in response to the the Hyytiälä Forest scientific project, Finland.
Artist-in-Residence program (2020-24) at the University of Helsinki. This program, part of the Climate Whirl Art & Science initiative, is based at the Hyytiälä Forestry Field Station, where groundbreaking research on the interactions between boreal forests and the atmosphere has been conducted for over 25 years. For more information: www.climatewhirl.fi/en
Image: Siobhan McDonald at work in the Hyytiälä Forestry Field Station, Finland. Artist-in-Residence program (2020-24) at the University of Helsinki.
BOZAR + Ars Electronica: Studiotopia
BOZAR + Ars Electronica: Studiotopia. European cultural institutions such as: Ars Electronica and Onassis. Commissioned artworks will be presented at Ars Electonica in 2022, Siobhán McDonald
The nature project
Siobhan is utilising Irish boglands as outdoor laboratories to explore how carbon stores impact the future of our air. The Nature Project 2021.
JRC, EU COMMISSION, RESIDENCY 2021
Siobhan McDonald on residency at the JRC, EU Commission. This is courtesy of the Alumni Award from the EU COMMISSION. ‘Listening to Soil’ is being realised throughout 2021
Climate Whirl artist-in-residence 2021
Siobhan McDonald, Irish visual artist is selected as artist-in-residence for Climate Whirl arts program in 2020. The international open call received 168 applications by 18th November 2019 and the jury, composed by Jaana Bäck, professor in Forest-Atmosphere Interactions (INAR, University of Helsinki), Timo Vesala, professor in Meteorology (INAR, University of Helsinki), Henna Paunu, chief curator at EMMA (Espoo Museum for Modern Art), Paula Toppila executive director at IHME Helsinki and Ulla Taipale, curator of Climate Whirl had a demanding task to choose one applicant for the 2020 residency.
Arctic Circle Residency 2016
Siobhan was selected from an International call out to participate in the The Arctic Circle Residency programme to live and work for three weeks aboard a Barquentine tall ship in the waters of the international territory of Svalbard, an Arctic archipelago just 10 degrees latitude from the North Pole.
Artist Talk
Siobhan McDonald. Sim Residency, Iceland. 2012
Studio, DC Dakota crashed aircraft, 2011
This project takes it’s starting point in an abandoned aircraft at the most southern tip of Iceland under the shadow of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano and glacier. I discovered the aircraft in April 2010 (6 weeks after the volcano erupted,) and it struck me as being a portal to another place.
The piece is inspired by the tiny holes bored through the walls of the aircraft by the effects of time. They seem patterned on various celestial constellations creating something like a concrete pinhole camera. The interior became a real-time filmic space for me where points of light slide imperceptibly around the inner surface as the sun travels from horizon to horizon. The holes are photographic in the finest sense. Each mark is a small black sun. And each dot is a repeat pattern of the sun’s image scaled down many million times (150 KL away). Each dot records the history of the sun’s ray on its journey to the earth and the projection seeks to show the inverse of the journey.
Vatnajokull Glacier, Iceland
Artist and curator talk
Galway Arts Center. Eye of the Storm. May 2012. Independent Curator, Aoife Tunney & Artist Siobhan McDonald
Studio Dublin
Studio
Studio, Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Monaghan 2013
Research
Conversations on soil
Zoomed-out at the EU Commission 2021. @gluon_bxl @bozarbrussels @eucommission
Datami EU Commission Ispra, Italy
Datami EU Commission Ispra, Italy
This project has been taking place at the EU Science Hub Joint Research Laboratory in Ispra, and will culminate in an exhibition within Italy and Brussels in Autumn and December 2019
Moon Infinitum
'Moon Infinitum'
Smoke, Beeswax, Bone & oil paint on Whole Calf skin. 1 mtr square
Commissioned by the Denis O'Brien Centre, UCD
I take as points of pictorial reference the graphic interpretations of data received by seismology as part of scientists’ efforts to chart distant earth movements which impacts on our weather. My research on the Irish annals and a set of 350-million-year-old Irish coral fossils are key components in this installation.
Red rain
'Red Rain'
Smoke, Beeswax, Bone & oil paint on Whole Calf skin.
Commissioned by the Denis O'Brien Centre, UCD.
This installation invites the viewer to contemplate delicate structures from ancient records to act as replicas of the rhythms of nature & to remind the viewer that the earth is on a continuous cycle of rebalancing itself.
How the water moves
'How the water moves.'
'How the water moves,' is a new commission for the School of Biology and Environmental Science, University College Dublin. I am investigating plants & atmospheres as far back as 400 million years, to explore the essential ‘nature’ that, invisible to the eye, acts as imaginary portholes into other times and states of existence. This new body of work will be launched in 2017.
Public art commission for the School of Biology and Environmental Science, University College Dublin.
Only Connect 2015: Deep Songs
Only Connect 2015: Deep Songs
In March 2015 Siobhan McDonald was invited to make a film for Susan Stenger’s Deep Songs, commissioned for nyMusikk's Only Connect Festival Of Sound and premiered at Fabrikken 5 June. With Hardanger fiddle players Nils Økland and Britt Pernille Frøholm, Stenger on electric bass and alto flute, field recordings by Professor Chris Bean (Seismologist at University College Dublin). Deep Songs is supported by Norsk kulturråd. Funding by Culture Ireland.
'Journey to the Epicentre II' An expedition to the Vatnajökull glacier in Iceland
'Journey to the Epicentre II' An expedition to the Vatnajökull glacier in Iceland.
Ephemeral event in a place that was completely unpredictable. Wire and rocks Iceland, 2013. Our mission was to place an array of seismometers along the flanks of Grimsvotn, an active volcano that sits at the edge of the glacier, and record the tremors deep below the glacial ice. The idea is that by listening closely to the “heartbeat” of Grimsvotn, I might understand the inner workings of the volcano. Irish Times article