Research | Residencies
Commissioned by the Alfred Kordelin Foundation in response to the the Hyytiälä Forest scientific project, Finland.
Artist-in-Residence program (2020-24) at the University of Helsinki. This program, part of the Climate Whirl Art & Science initiative, is based at the Hyytiälä Forestry Field Station, where groundbreaking research on the interactions between boreal forests and the atmosphere has been conducted for over 25 years. For more information: www.climatewhirl.fi/en
Artist-in-Residence program (2020-24) at the University of Helsinki.
Siobhán McDonald is an artist in residence at Trinity College Dublin. She is currently working with the Terraform project. Terraform’s research funding (ERC: 101020824) is supporting Siobhán’s recent project. Working with Terraform provides a unique context for her engagement with deep-time processes and environmental change. The ERC-funded TERRAFORM project investigates how plants have shaped Earth’s habitability over hundreds of millions of years. It focuses on the evolution of plant traits over the past 300 million years and their influence on large-scale Earth system processes, such as the hydrological cycle and mineral weathering.
For more information, visit: https://plantclimatelab.ie/terraform/
Terraform project at Trinity College Dublin
BOZAR + Ars Electronica: Studiotopia
BOZAR + Ars Electronica: Studiotopia. European cultural institutions such as: Ars Electronica and Onassis. Commissioned artworks will be presented at Ars Electonica in 2022, Siobhán McDonald
Fragments of an unexplored consciousness
Ongoing collaborative research project and exhibition 2019 - Present
Siobhan McDonald was selected to work with European Cultural Institutions such as BOZAR: Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels and Gluon: Platform for Art, Science and Technology on a new project about environmental change.
Within this framework McDonald presents Invisible Herbarium which draws specific attention to the significance of past worlds exposed in our peatland landscapes as permafrost melts. Arctic permafrost holds mostly the partially decayed remains of ancient plants which are released into the atmosphere as it melts and therefore impacts our air. Both living and dead, the plants preserved in this depository trace a history of evolution, charting histories of generations of plant species, systems and anatomy.
The commissioned artworks will be presented at BOZAR in 2022. STUDIOTOPIA – Art meets Science in the Anthropocene (2019-2022) https://www.studiotopia.eu/ is an initiative that aims to increase collaborations between cultural and research institutions, academia, innovation centers, creatives and citizens. The initiative consists of eight European cultural institutions: Centre for Fine Arts (BOZAR) and GLUON in Brussels, Ars Electronica in Linz, Cluj Cultural Centre in Cluj, Laznia Centre for Contemporary Art in Gdansk, Onassis Stegi in Athens, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Laboral in Gijón.
Throughout the duration of this initiative (2019-2022), STUDIOTOPIA will propose a vast programme of activities across the partnering institutions: residencies, exhibitions, pop-up labs, workshops and talks. The intention of this project is to raise awareness and foster creative and critical reflections about environmental challenges that our society is currently facing.
Clara Bog, Ireland
Photo: Siobhan McDonald 2021
In a delicate enquiry using drawing, sound and film I am exploring the mystery around how the ancient plant Silene came back to life from 32,000 year old seeds, encouraging contemplation of humans’ position amidst the immensity of nature. Through the use of imagined worlds, film, sound and paint I am attempting to delve into the emotional understanding of how our activities affect frequencies that change the planet's fragile equilibrium.
“Experimentation is at the core of what I do. A large part of my work is not really yet visible in this next stage of the project where I am exploring the mystery around how an ancient plant called Silene Stenophylla came back to life from 32,000-year-old seeds”
Studiotopia — Invisible Herbarium
The nature project
Siobhan is utilising Irish boglands as outdoor laboratories to explore how carbon stores impact the future of our air. The Nature Project 2021.
JRC, EU COMMISSION, RESIDENCY 2021
Siobhan McDonald on residency at the JRC, EU Commission. This is courtesy of the Alumni Award from the EU COMMISSION. ‘Listening to Soil’ is being realised throughout 2021
Climate Whirl artist-in-residence 2021
Siobhan McDonald, Irish visual artist is selected as artist-in-residence for Climate Whirl arts program in 2020. The international open call received 168 applications by 18th November 2019 and the jury, composed by Jaana Bäck, professor in Forest-Atmosphere Interactions (INAR, University of Helsinki), Timo Vesala, professor in Meteorology (INAR, University of Helsinki), Henna Paunu, chief curator at EMMA (Espoo Museum for Modern Art), Paula Toppila executive director at IHME Helsinki and Ulla Taipale, curator of Climate Whirl had a demanding task to choose one applicant for the 2020 residency.
Arctic Circle Residency 2016
Siobhan was selected from an International call out to participate in the The Arctic Circle Residency programme to live and work for three weeks aboard a Barquentine tall ship in the waters of the international territory of Svalbard, an Arctic archipelago just 10 degrees latitude from the North Pole.
Artist Talk
Siobhan McDonald. Sim Residency, Iceland. 2012
Studio, DC Dakota crashed aircraft, 2011
This project takes it’s starting point in an abandoned aircraft at the most southern tip of Iceland under the shadow of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano and glacier. I discovered the aircraft in April 2010 (6 weeks after the volcano erupted,) and it struck me as being a portal to another place.
The piece is inspired by the tiny holes bored through the walls of the aircraft by the effects of time. They seem patterned on various celestial constellations creating something like a concrete pinhole camera. The interior became a real-time filmic space for me where points of light slide imperceptibly around the inner surface as the sun travels from horizon to horizon. The holes are photographic in the finest sense. Each mark is a small black sun. And each dot is a repeat pattern of the sun’s image scaled down many million times (150 KL away). Each dot records the history of the sun’s ray on its journey to the earth and the projection seeks to show the inverse of the journey.
Vatnajokull Glacier, Iceland
Artist and curator talk
Galway Arts Center. Eye of the Storm. May 2012. Independent Curator, Aoife Tunney & Artist Siobhan McDonald
Studio Dublin
Studio
Studio, Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Monaghan 2013
Research
Conversations on soil
Zoomed-out at the EU Commission 2021. @gluon_bxl @bozarbrussels @eucommission
Datami EU Commission Ispra, Italy
Datami EU Commission Ispra, Italy
This project has been taking place at the EU Science Hub Joint Research Laboratory in Ispra, and will culminate in an exhibition within Italy and Brussels in Autumn and December 2019
Moon Infinitum
'Moon Infinitum'
Smoke, Beeswax, Bone & oil paint on Whole Calf skin. 1 mtr square
Commissioned by the Denis O'Brien Centre, UCD
I take as points of pictorial reference the graphic interpretations of data received by seismology as part of scientists’ efforts to chart distant earth movements which impacts on our weather. My research on the Irish annals and a set of 350-million-year-old Irish coral fossils are key components in this installation.
Red rain
'Red Rain'
Smoke, Beeswax, Bone & oil paint on Whole Calf skin.
Commissioned by the Denis O'Brien Centre, UCD.
This installation invites the viewer to contemplate delicate structures from ancient records to act as replicas of the rhythms of nature & to remind the viewer that the earth is on a continuous cycle of rebalancing itself.
How the water moves
'How the water moves.'
'How the water moves,' is a new commission for the School of Biology and Environmental Science, University College Dublin. I am investigating plants & atmospheres as far back as 400 million years, to explore the essential ‘nature’ that, invisible to the eye, acts as imaginary portholes into other times and states of existence. This new body of work will be launched in 2017.
Public art commission for the School of Biology and Environmental Science, University College Dublin.
Only Connect 2015: Deep Songs
Only Connect 2015: Deep Songs
In March 2015 Siobhan McDonald was invited to make a film for Susan Stenger’s Deep Songs, commissioned for nyMusikk's Only Connect Festival Of Sound and premiered at Fabrikken 5 June. With Hardanger fiddle players Nils Økland and Britt Pernille Frøholm, Stenger on electric bass and alto flute, field recordings by Professor Chris Bean (Seismologist at University College Dublin). Deep Songs is supported by Norsk kulturråd. Funding by Culture Ireland.
'Journey to the Epicentre II' An expedition to the Vatnajökull glacier in Iceland
'Journey to the Epicentre II' An expedition to the Vatnajökull glacier in Iceland.
Ephemeral event in a place that was completely unpredictable. Wire and rocks Iceland, 2013. Our mission was to place an array of seismometers along the flanks of Grimsvotn, an active volcano that sits at the edge of the glacier, and record the tremors deep below the glacial ice. The idea is that by listening closely to the “heartbeat” of Grimsvotn, I might understand the inner workings of the volcano. Irish Times article