Artist Statement: 

Roisin Sullivan is an emerging multidisciplinary international artist, showing and performing works in Rotterdam, London, Bedford, Winchester and Devon. Sullivan’s practice often interchanges with its form most appropriate for the conceptualisation of the work. She has previously worked in film, sound, performance, installation and sculpture. Her practice explores conventions of visibility and invisibility, and the expression of her microcosmic experiences.

More recently Sullivan’s work has explored different variations of space and body. Their work discusses absurdity within art. This absurdity has stemmed from an existential perspective based upon their microscopic experiences. In addressing the absurd in their work, they have revealed the absurdity of life through their understanding of it. The theme of absurdity within their practice is paired with anthropomorphic language placed upon the medium they use: their body. These performances are often documented by video, however may vary based upon appropriateness of the work at the time.  Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human characteristics or behaviour placed upon a god, animal or object, as defined by the Oxford dictionary. Recent pieces utilise anthropomorphism as a process by manipulating their body as an image, whilst activating different spaces and non-spaces.  

Artists such as Pipolotti Rist, Rachel Rose, Rose English and Bruce Nauman have been of particular inspirations within their most recent body of work. Although most inspiration for Sullivan’s practice derives from one’s microcosmic understanding of the world, such artists have been referential for conceptual, developmental and installation process of their practice. Her most recent piece is inspired by PipolottiRist’sinstallation 4thFloor of Mildness in its installation. In critiquing objects and their functionality, their most recent installation was inspired to format TV’s in a non-conventional way, to expel the absurdity addressed within these videos.

Sullivan’s intentions to peruse their practice is to explore the elements of absurdism through the medium of film, visually similar to the Teletubbie’sand Alice in Wonderland. Sullivan hopes that her practice will aid an neurotypical’s understanding of people on the spectrum through these films, in a similar way Pingu has been made for such an audience.