I presented this multi-layered installation for my degree show from the Sculpture & Combined Media Program in the Limerick School of Art and Design, 2026. It has also been shown in part at The Douglas Hyde, as part of The Conditions of Being Here (September 2026).
The idea came from a daily practice of walking the same route, to and from college, in a loop. Living with fluctuating chronic illness and pain meant that each time I walked the same route felt different, taxed my body differently. An inverse of psychogeography, my perception of the space I moved through was shaped by my thoughts and psyche, but also by my physical body.
At the core of Connective Tissues/Cognitive Mapping is a parallel set of audios: the first exists as a guided audio walk, which brings listeners along that daily route to and from college. The audio muses on disabled embodiment, psychogeography, and phenomonology- the study of subjective human experience, coupled with varyingly vulnerable personal diary entries and reflections.
In the gallery space, there is a parallel audio. Identical to the audio walk in every way, except for one key difference: the conditional tense. Where the ‘walk’ audio instructs listeners- “you will walk, you will turn, you will see”, the ‘gallery’ audio is restricted to the gallery space, and acknowledges this, instead saying “you would walk, you would turn, you would see”. If only you could. If not for chronic illness which leaves you unable.
The ideas behind this work are further expanded in the accompanying publication, which also features black and white analogue images from the walk route.
Important also to the work is the gallery installation of a used park bench, donated by Laois County Council. In The Conditions of Being Here, The Douglas Hyde (September 2026), the work was shown with a bench borrowed from Trinity College Dublin. The positioning of an everyday object in an institutional space transforms and legitimises its meaning. The bureaucracy involved in acquiring such benches echoes the repetitive nature of chronic illness and, especially, the circles of bureaucracy associated with seeking diagnosis and care. In public space, a bench functions with dual comfort and vulnerability. A site to rest can become a place where one can feel most exposed- something especially considerable for people made vulnerable by disability.
