Member Profile | Material Acts

KATHRYN MAGUIRE OUTLINES HER LATEST RESIDENCY AND RECENT DEVELOPMENTS WITHIN HER PRACTICE.

I am a visual artist and educator whose practice incorporates socially engaged projects, environmental awareness projects, and public art projects. I create sculptural installations and interventions to explore ideas with communities and within the gallery space. A recurrent theme in my work focuses on voices of the silenced and the non-human, exploring how they might have agency in memory and history.

Exploring geology, the history of materials, and the circular economy, my current work concentrates on lithics, minerals, and mining. I examine rocks and minerals from various international locations, through a situated, land-based practice. Increasingly, my work engages processes of making, informed by my earlier training as a jewellery-maker and sculptor. I create artworks that convey the complexities of deep time, visible in materials. 

I want to reveal fundamental and invisible forces and energies, explored by scientists and experts alike; these concepts are central to my practice. Works such as Microns 1 & 2 (2024) have used scientific technology to reveal the geomythologies we inhabit and host. Taking the form of large, printed banners, these works feature electron micrographs of river clay samples, depicting metal pollution. Geologist Dr Tim Newman sourced clay samples and other geological strata for me, from the site of the River Thames Tideway project, where the Super Sewer construction is situated. I then took these samples to Innes Clatworthy, Electron Microscopist in the Imaging and Analysis Core Research Laboratories in The Natural History Museum in London, and we used an electron microscope to create the Electron Micrographs, with the spherules of iron oxide silicates pushing out of the clay. The banners were exhibited in ‘When We Cease to Understand the World’, curated by Marysia Więckiewicz-Carroll at Interface in Connemara (14 – 28 July 2024). 

Another work exploring scientific analysis was Mountain Mapping (2024), exhibited in my solo show ‘To the Mountain’ at Leitrim Sculpture Centre (30 August – 21 September 2024). Three local mountains (Benbo, Slieve League, and Iron) were 3D-printed from digital contour maps and mounted on surveyor’s tripods, painted gold for tuning and communing with the earth’s magnetism. The work incorporates geological specimens from each of the mountains: Iron Nodule, Paragneiss and Quartzite. The suspended rocks demonstrate a simple geological experiment to determine ‘specific gravity’. 

‘To the Mountain’ exhibition was the outcome of my three-month residency at Leitrim Sculpture Centre, exploring the mapping of mountains. The mapping of Ireland was developed by the early Ordnance Survey (OS) in 1824 to facilitate taxation and the ‘underground potential’ of geological and material value. The mapping was done by creating a series of primary triangles; sightings were taken between stations using theodolites on top of selected mountains. This, and my question, ‘Do Mountains commune with us?’ inspired the fabrication of artworks in the show. Many of these works were informed by my research into magnetism, Earth Sciences and measurement, geological phenomena, and experiments in the field. The exhibition asked: How can we shift away from over-mining and endless extraction of the Earth’s minerals towards a circular economy?

The work, Mount Ida (2024), conjures the magical and mythical, whilst attempting to comprehend the mystery of magnetism and its name-origin. A pair of traditional Greek shoes, known as tsarouchi, are cast in iron and attached to a strong welding magnet. This work was inspired by the myth of Magnes, associated with a shepherd, reputedly the first to notice magnetism, when his shoes got stuck to lodestone/ magnetite on the ground at Mount Ida. It was also informed by time spent exploring the magnetic cores of Iceland. I visited a geological drill core archive in East Iceland and documented the magnetic power of the cores with very strong magnets (neodymium).

I am intrigued by alchemical changes in metals, minerals, and spirituality. Materials and matter have an ancient importance as Prima Materia. Using metal and stone supports these interests, because the materials are always changing and breathing. This is important to my understanding of deep time. Cast in Jesmonite with black stone-shungite pigments, my snake sculpture, The Keeper (2021), holds the secrets of stones and guards the thresholds. It was exhibited in ‘Hivernal’, curated by Eamonn Maxwell at Roscommon Arts Centre (1 November – 21 December 2024). 

Cast in pigmented Jesmonite with gold, shungite and iron oxide, the work Mineral Mountain (2024) was an attempt to commune with the sacred elements within mountains and rocks. The mountain sculptures are inspired by geodata forms of the Iron Mountain in Leitrim. Rocks, metals and plants are ground up to become homoeopathic and offer healing: shungite (for protection), gold (representing the sun, and a vital element in balancing energies) and dragon blood powder (to neutralise negative energies). 

My solo exhibition ‘To the Mountain’ at Leitrim Sculpture Centre (30 August – 21 September 2024) considered how we commune with the Earth, its divinity, scientific knowledge, and colonial histories to explore alchemical traits and forms. I was subsequently awarded a six-month Artist Studios Residency (from August 2025 to January 2026) at The Model in Sligo. My forthcoming show, ‘Material Acts’, will run from 11 to 27 September at Pallas Projects/Studios, as part of the Artist-Initiated Projects programme for 2025. ‘Material Acts’ will present a sculptural investigation relating to geology, alchemical changes, and environmental colonialism.

Kathryn Maguire is an artist based in Sligo.

kathrynmaguire.net