Works

In dress, soaked in luxury Collins placed a dress into the sea, allowing the currents to shape and fold it while capturing its movement through photography. The resulting images including three successive photographs showing the dress wrapping around a rock, document the delicate tension between surrender and retrieval, human intervention and natural movement. These works are also entitled i ndochas dhomhain (deepest down), emphasizing depth, presence, and the subtleties of interaction with the sea.

A few days later, Collins returned to the Atlantic to record tennis ball, ag teacht i dtír (“landed”), an unexpected object delivered by the water. Both works engage in a quiet dialogue of arrival, encounter, and reciprocity, reflecting the artist’s experience of inhabiting the edges – personal and environmental, self and other.

The film work sea will receive her own chair (2010) extends this enquiry through moving image, performance, projection, and audio. Distorted video and close-up imagery reveal textures, rhythms, and depths of the sea, while audio tracks repeating phrases such as “sea will receive her own share” and “I will receive my own share” create an intimate dialogue between body, language, and water.

Across the series, Collins works at what she terms “edges”: liminal zones where life and art, observation and participation, human and elemental forces intersect. Collaborations with local communities, ferry owners, fishermen, and groups such as Comhrá na nAosach on Inis Oírr inform the work, embedding local knowledge, narratives, and collective memory into the pieces. Participatory research, residencies, and workshops extend the practice beyond the studio, creating relational encounters that transform the work as relationships and experiences develop.

Selected Works

• dress, soaked in luxury / i ndochas dhomhain – Photographs capturing the dialogue between clothing, water, and human presence
• tennis ball, ag teacht i dtír – Photographic study of objects delivered by the sea and thresholds of encounter
• sea will receive her own chair – Film installation exploring the intersections of water, body, and language
• 13 Noiméad – Audio collaboration with Comhrá na nAosach, Inis Oírr, documenting community knowledge and stories

Exhibitions & Commissions

• sea-line-breath (multi-media exhibition, 2010)
• Solo shows: Áras Éanna and The Higher Bridges Gallery, Fermanagh (2010)
• SALT Exhibition, Tallinn, Estonia (2011)
• 13 Noiméad, TULCA, Galway (in collaboration with Comhrá na nAosach)

Support: Arts Offices of Co. Fermanagh and Co. Clare, Áras Éanna, and the Irish Embassy in Estonia