Solo Exhibition
Dunamaise Arts Centre, Portlaoise
2008

Light, Space and the Body was an early solo exhibition by Maeve Collins exploring embodiment through drawing, light, and transparent materials. Developed through meditative studio processes, the works investigated how the body might be sensed and translated into space through layers of glass, fabric, resin, and light. This enquiry into perception, presence, and the relationship between body and environment would later expand into Collins’ wider practice exploring ecology, place, and collective forms of sensing.

Exhibition

This exhibition brought together a series of self-portrait works developed through drawing and meditation. Rather than representing the body directly, the works approached embodiment as a spatial and perceptual experience. Drawing functioned as a way of returning attention to the body, with the artworks emerging from a reflective practice of stillness, observation, and awareness.

Transparent and translucent materials – including glass, voile, steel, and clear casting resin- were layered to create installations that responded to light and surrounding space. Through these materials the works attempted to hold fleeting traces of bodily perception. Light passing through the surfaces revealed shifting forms and subtle drawings that appeared and disappeared depending on the viewer’s movement and position.

Across the exhibition, light acted as an active material. Moving through transparent layers, it opened up unseen spatial relationships and allowed drawings and forms to hover between visibility and disappearance. The installations invited viewers to encounter the body not as a fixed image but as a shifting field of perception shaped by movement, attention, and environment.

Many of the questions emerging in this work, around sensing, embodiment, and the relationship between human presence and surrounding space , would later expand in Collins’ practice toward ecological enquiry and socially engaged work with landscapes, communities, and other species.

Selected Works

glimpse
Steel, glass, drawing on voile, clear casting resin
2007

A layered installation using transparent materials to explore the fleeting presence of the body in space. Light passing through the surfaces reveals subtle drawings and spatial relationships that shift as the viewer moves.

Window Installation

An installation of layered materials and drawn lines suggesting the continual transformation between sensual, emotional, and mental states of the body.

Support

Supported by Laois Arts Office through the Tyrone Guthrie Award (2007)
With thanks to Dunamaise Arts Centre