Celina Muldoon
Biography
Identity and Memory are themes around which I investigate relationships between socio-political structures and the body. I use collaborative processes to test live performance methodologies in response to site and context. My Performances and Films cultivate uneasiness through satire. Critical triggers of my live work rely upon audience participation and interaction. Audio and live installation elements work in tandem to manifest highly charged experiences unfolding momentarily in real time.
Research projects include a Live Art event in Temple Bar Gallery and Studios which was selected for LIVE COLLISION 2018 in the Project Arts Centre Dublin. This interactive installation was an architecturally informed response to Studio 6 and The Atrium Space in TBG&S. Referring to Foucault's Panopticon Theory, Judith Butler's 'Gender Performativity' and analysis of the body as a representation of political agency, the work was realised through a sci-fi re-enactment of mythological narratives. Borrowing from these theories, the work played with the subject of surveillance and ideas around phenomenology and lived experience.
Muldoon (b. 1980) is an Artist based in North West Ireland. She has recently been awarded The Next Generation Bursary Award and The Artist in the Community Scheme Award from the Arts Council of Ireland. Graduating with a First Class Honors degree in Fine Art, I.T. Sligo in 2014, her work was purchased for their permanent collection. Muldoon completed an MFA in Sculpture from N.C.A.D. in 2016. She was a member of Jesse Jones NO MORE FUN AND GAMES (2016) feminist collective and Amanda Coogan's 'I'll sing you a song from arounf the town' 2015.
Her graduate work 'We are in cahoots...You and I' was selected for Mobius(Boston) int. performance festival 2017 and Craw festival Berlin 2018. Muldoon has completed residencies in MART and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre. She has exhibited in TBG&S, The Complex, waveparticle and Celine gallery, Glasgow and Project Arts Centre Dublin. She has been awarded a residency in Cowhouse studios in partnership with The Mothership Project in November 2018. She has been awarded the Next Generation Bursary award, The Artist in the community scheme award and a residency in Cowhouse studios in partnership with The Mothership Project in November 2018 and the prestigious Temple Bar Gallery and Studio Project Studio Award 2019. Current research projects include a collaborative performance and film work. The debut of this project took place as part of Periodical Review #8 in PP/S Dublin. Her solo show SIRENS in Pallas Project and Studios Dublin in March 2019 was a major Live Performance event which enacted the indoor and outdoor spaces of the gallery. The second iteration of SIRENS was launched for LIVE COLLISiON 2019 in Project Arts Centre and Temple Bar Gallery and Studios Dublin. SIRENS III was presented as a solo exhibition in Kevin Kavanagh Gallery Dublin and was selected for FUTURES SERIES THREE EPISODE THREE in he Royal Hibernian Academy Dublin 2019.
Live performance venues include the Firkin Crane theatre, Cork, Livestock; Performance Art platform, Dublin; The Complex Gallery, Dublin and MART Gallery Dublin. Muldoon has recently exhibited in Glasgow with WAVEparticle and Celine Gallery. Between June and December 2016 she completed the 'cultural dialogues' residency in MART studios and Gallery, Dublin. She has performed with Dublin Live Art Festival 2017. As part of the Next Generation Award she has recently concluded a residency in the Tyrone Guthrie centre.
Writer and Philosopher Dr. El Putnam writes of Muldoon's 2016 work Navel Gazing with Nora Helmer:
Muldoon cultivates a false façade of hospitality glazed in the consumable culture within which we exist. She changes her headdresses throughout the performance, taking on the form of a dominatrix that complicates the scenario presented. At certain moments she pauses, gazing nowhere as tears seem to collect in her eyes, alluding to a crack in her emotional mask. These psychic shimmers slip away to the beat of the music providing the soundtrack, alluding to a hidden depth of human relations that exceeds the public eye. Her performance is an exaggerated spectacle that simultaneously reveals its falseness and hides an unknown truth, acknowledging the complexity of life within the home.