Siobhán McDonald is an Irish artist based in Dublin. Her practice draws attention to contemporary topics dealing with air, breath and atmospheric phenomena, weaving scientific knowledge into her art in a poetic and thoughtful manner, emphasising field work and collaboration she works with natural materials, withdrawing them from their cycles of generation, growth and decay. This process gives form to a range of projects which consider our place on Earth in the context of geological time. Her work with glaciers and other natural phenomena deploys a unique artistic language that gives form to intangible and richly varied processes including painting, drawing, film and sound.

https://www.siobhanmcdonald.com/ 

To Breathe

Together with scientists at the JRC and Trinity College Dublin, artist Siobhán McDonald revisited historical processes of botanic image making to create drawings and 3D works of plants that coexist with toxicity. Using air-borne pollutants collected from EU cities, ash and film footage from EU volcanoes, she created drawings, paintings and film works to show how plants and humans are adapting to air pollution, both now and historically. These included ...

• Breathe, a multi-platform project, responds to the broader context of air and how our breathing has changed due to the long process of human evolution and the fact that everything breathes, and everything is interconnected through breath. The film weaves together narratives of studies in human breath, medicine and ancient plant remedies to explore the idea of coexistence in a world moved by invisible networks. Research was conducted in response to Wilhelm Pfeffer’s chronophotographic experiment involving the stages of plant growth. The project was graciously supported by Deutsches Hygiene-Museum, Dresden, for the exhibition Of Plants and People. 
• Connected by Air, whichtakes as its subject the delicate ecologies and co-existence between the lungs of the earth, humans and plants. The project explores a selection of major European volcanoes and points to the cycle of the earth breathing within the carbon cycle of our ecosystems. The work premiered at the Datami exhibition at BOZAR in 2020, focusing on air and how we, as humans, can affect our surroundings. The installation is composed of a series of glass prisms embellished from the repeated application of thin, transparent layers of pigment made from volcanic ash to form an optical quality surface. The artwork was recently acquired for the Arts Council’s collection of Ireland, and formed a display of works by Siobhan McDonald at VOLTA, Basel in June 2019.

A collaboration between Siobhán McDonald, Francesco Mugnai, Jean-Philippe Putaud and Tullio Ricci (INGV).

Listening to Soil & the Critical Zone

Resonances III led Siobhán to the STUDIOTOPIA project, a cultural exchange and art-science residency programme between different countries, artists and scientists, including the JRC. 

In a delicate enquiry using drawing, sound and film Siobhán looked at processes in the earth, such as the melting of the glaciers into the water cycle – which we as humans accelerate through our existence on the planet. She worked with Irish scientist Professor Chris Bean, JRC soil scientist Arwyn Jones, Teresa Lettieri, and Emily Shuckburgh to develop a project focused on SDG Goal 13 (Climate action) and Goal 14 (Life Below Water) in the framework of the STUDIOTOPIA scientists-in-residence programme. Their collaboration started when Siobhán asked Chris to bring her on a fieldtrip to listen to the heartbeat of the Vatnajökull glacier in Iceland. Since then the pair have talked about signals felt from the interface of land and deep oceans.

Their project was born from a mutual interest in a thin area between the soil and the rocks where all systems connect described as the Critical Zone; it seeks to explore how our human activities affect frequencies within this Zone, that then change the planet's fragile equilibrium.

And so Siobhán was back in residency at JRC Ispra, to exchange with Arwyn, explore the soil library, collect soil samples to make pigments, and discover the Lago Maggiore as the place where Alessandro Volta first discovered Methane in 1776. She gave more insights into their collaboration during a presentation on 06/12/2022 to JRC colleagues (and live-stream). They also hoped to represent current issues with an art installation of Siobhan’s work, at the upcoming World Soil Conference in Glasgow in 2022, and re-connect those who might have lost touch with soil.

The STUDIOTOPIA Art&Science residency programme culminated in the travelling exhibition Colliding Epistemes(BOZAR Brussels, Belgium,  Laznia Centre for Contemporary Art, Poland, Cluj Cultural Centre, Romania), with 13 residencies bringing together artists and scientists.Listening to Soilwas also exhibited at the at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria, as part of the STUDIO(dys)TOPIA – At the Peak of Humankind Exhibition as part of a larger installation of Siobhán's: INVISIBLE SEAM.