Thomas Pool: How would you describe your background and training?
Caoilfhionn Hanton: I’m a painter and mixed media artist from Waterford who recently graduated with a BA (Hons) in Visual Arts from South East Technological University. My artistic journey started at 15, painting outdoor walls. Now, I mainly work indoors with paint, soft-sculpture, film and performance, with public street art/mural work being more considered than before, personalised to what I want to do and saved for when it truly matters.
I had an early exposure to street art fundamentals through secondary school work experience with Dublin artist Steve Kemp. I’ve assisted and learned from painters over the years – in the past decade, I’ve collaborated with muralists, participated in paint jams and street art festivals, including Waterford Walls and Belfast’s Hit the North. I’ve completed numerous commissions, hosted workshops and formed valuable connections and friendships in the artistic community Ireland-wide.
My practice has expanded in recent years. At 25, I’m now striving to align my technical ability, taste and skill level with projects based upon my interests, regardless of their financial output.
I also create guerilla-style street art with wheat-pasting posters. Last year my friends Rhys, Erika and I wheat-pasted collages and cut-out prints I had made of us in eccentric outfits from an improvised street performance project called ‘Blaasification’ onto streets all around Waterford City. The work evolves with environmental decay; a delightful spectacle to be interacted with or to be removed. This swift and less permanent approach allows for quick, impactful expression. That project was so joyful, spurring me onto applying to Creative Waterford/Ireland and thankfully being awarded some funding for ‘Blaasification’ in which we worked with kids and teenagers in a series of free mixed-media workshops, concluding in a ‘blaasified’ photoshoot.
TP: You’ve described your work as having a focus on “digital folklore, affectionate anthropology and curated spaces of self-hood” – could you elaborate on that for us?
CH: I suppose that summarization may sound long winded, but it’s an attempt to delineate the privileged trappings of the life I’ve been born into and am visually investigating through mixed media means. These are topics I feel we’re living through, and for my recent degree show I explored the ontology of chronically-online childhood to infantilized adulthood by virtue of neoliberalism. Living your whole life with social technology in your hands feels akin to being a people-watcher, peering out from a gilded cage of endless nichification, augmentation and digital dopamine addiction.
Visually investigating the cognitive dissonance of growing up in the ‘Post-Internet’ era feels akin to visiting a metaphysical purgatory. Somewhere between the ‘IRL’ and the ‘URL’, my adolescence preserved in pixels still feels alive and tangible. Now, as an adult, I see the importance of ‘play’ more than ever now.
As for ‘affectionate anthropology’; I lifted this description from Richard Brody’s New York review of Agnes Varda’s 1975 film Daguerréotypes. I love allegorical, figurative work with ambling narratives rooted in real humanity the most and that’s what I want to focus on; be it through the medium of painting, TikTok-ified performance, or gonzo journalism on the street. People, raw and real in their natural states or modified beyond compare, are the most interesting thing in the world to me.
TP: How has your, self-described, ‘Gen Z’ ethos shaped your practice so far?
CH: That’s a great question and something I’m still working out myself. I suppose that I align myself with my peers, not just in the shared language of accelerated memetics, etymology and humour, but in a political way as well.
To me, being Gen Z means I accidentally discovered whole schools of thought through hardcore social media addiction. Coming across microinfluencers on Instagram led me to the author Mark Fisher and his book Ghosts of My Life (Zero Books, 2014), and base much of my thesis upon the ideas of Hauntology. I discovered the work of Jamian Juliani Villani from her incessant meme-posting. I found Ryan Trecartin’s video work on TikTok. Finding artists and academics who helpfully intellectualize and legitimise these human experiences through text and visuals is beyond inspiring.
While humour is key to me, coming across cultural theorists analysing why my peers and I instinctually fill our lives up with the cyclical ‘tat’ we’re algorithmically presented with, has massively informed my visual language and bettered my understanding of what I want to make.
We absorb, mutate and spit out the flattened culture fed to us. I wrote my thesis last year on the methodology of ‘Post-Internet’ artists, like Hito Steyerl, Joshua Citarella and Jon Rafman; researching how they’ve used ‘technology to appropriate and archive the social fabric of ‘Poor Image’ digital ephemera.’
Gen Z, to me, denotes the personal lens my generation views the world through. We’ve grown up online, both hopeful and afraid for what’s to come, with the idea that we are the future pallbearers, and caretakers, of the earth as well as each other.
TP: You recently worked with the artist Adam Doyle, also known as Spicebag, to create a mural of The Eviction, a piece that has garnered nationwide attention (including a column he wrote for the VAN May-June 2023 issue). Do you feel that street artists, due to the high visibility of their work, have a duty to create “politically motivated art”, as it was so notoriously put?
CH: I don’t feel that any artists making publicly accessible art have a responsibility to make any exact sort of work. The artistic expression of street artists, like any other type of artist, is inherently subjective and personal. Artists should continue to choose themes based on their own interests, perspectives, and experiences. Work that is ‘politically motivated’ can be great, be it shared online or put onto a wall. I’m glad that some street artists like Emmalene Blake/ESTR use their murals and platform as a vehicle to address social or political issues. It’s fantastic and very important. Ultimately, the decision to engage in activism through art in general, including through leaving physical marks on walls, is a personal one.
I loved working with Adam to recreate The Eviction. It was the most fulfilling project or ‘commission’ I’ve worked on yet, and I would absolutely work with designers who want to translate their cleverly constructed work onto walls in the future again. We’ve followed each other on Instagram for a few years and it came about quickly and organically, which suits my pace.
I wasn’t sure how The Eviction would go down; online or in person. I ordered the material, lift hire and a wall was secured. I was happy to do it either way. Adam needed that piece painted quickly, and rightfully so since he was fresh off his Tonight interview. It was also an interesting project to work on as it wasn’t my own work. I found that I could just focus on the process of painting with no feelings of slight mortification that comes with your own composition
Painting in my studio is a private task, but, going back to ‘affectionate anthropology’, it is the performance of painting in public and the interaction with strangers that always keeps me wanting to paint murals again. People on the ground always give thumbs up, compliments, and offer me coffee or a pint. Some people (always men) will ask if I’ve painted the piece I’m literally stood beside, perched above them in my cherry picker. I love using the guise of art to improvise, and I’m workshopping how best to try my hand at full-blown painterly ‘happenings’ à la vaudeville Jim Dine, Yves Klein and Niki de Saint Phalle.
TP: The current Public Art Mural Bill before The Dáil is seeking to allow artists and property owners to commission murals without needing approval from local councils. Where do you stand on this bill, and how do you feel it will affect street art if it’s passed?
CH: I welcome this much-needed change in legislation. I’m delighted the Bill has been developed, the last thing artists need, when trying to induce some sort of organic culture in cities that are hard enough to exist in, is to be brought to court over fabulous work. I love Dublin, but we all know the authenticity of its artistic soul has been rightfully questioned.
I hope that the creativity, quality and expression in work accessible to the public will dramatically rise with the passing of this Bill. I’ve met many wall-owners and strangers on the street who support and trust the artist to do their thing, and quite a few unimaginative clients or governing bodies who don’t want anything remotely interesting on their beautiful canvases.
While I’ve just graduated and hope to paint more frequently, I’ve never sought county council planning permission for a piece myself. I’ve always felt that I’d rather paint a fantastic piece that lives for however long it lives, and ask for forgiveness rather than permission.
As well as allowing for more cleverly constructed pieces, I can imagine this Bill making the process for artists much more relaxed to herald in more ‘weird’ work done with the highest material quality. Work that feels fresh, absurd, comforting, strange and/or truly arresting, as well as complimentary to the context of public spaces. I’m personally as interested in the paint-handling and materiality of what is to come as much as subject matter and conceptual choice. I would love it if streets in Ireland, rural and cosmopolitan, regularly featured work as gorgeously experimental as could be found inside a gallery.
TP: Are there any new projects you’re working on that you can tell us about?
CH: Since graduating in June, I’ve been immersing myself in creative hermit mode and furthering my next body of work.
Lots of drawing, image-making, painting, plotting out public engagements, live performances and collaborative work for the upcoming year. Trying to cut out irrelevant noise and hold onto hope, I feel that I’ve Hito Steyerl on one shoulder and Trisha Paytas on the other. One foot in the darkness and the other in a Hello Kitty roller-skate.
I’m fortunate to spend most days in my cosy studio at Garter Lane. Currently, one of my soft-sculptures is featured in Waterford’s Gallery of Modern Art Members Show, and this Autumn I received a graduate commission from the Waterford Gallery of Art for their permanent collection. My ‘Malibu/Dooleys’ diptych is in their custody, along with an impressive painting of me by the lovely Una Sealy. I welcome all cool opportunities into my life and I’m very excited for 2024.
Caoilfhionn Hanton is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Waterford and a member of Garter Lane Studios.
