Sinead Bhreathnach-Cashell

Travel Award_Sinead Bhreathnach-Cashell_Image 1_ Improvised public action part of Bbeyond monthly performance meetings_2008-2016

My practice thrives on finding social interaction in the most unlikely places. I can often be encountered with playmates or alone, plundering the streets, making playful interventions in search of a beach under the pavement. Continually learning through doing I use co-operative play to pursue the production of socially relevant knowledge. This kaleidoscopic practice includes interactive installations; drawing; performance, workshops; collaborations and curating. My ideas are generated by both spontaneous responses to and careful observations of the constraints and possibilities embedded in local surroundings and their social contexts. Through playing in public places I investigate how our environment shapes how we experience, explore and think. The people who inhabit these spaces are invited to partake in my activities and share their wealth of experience, skills and knowledge. Inclusive activities make space and time for the possibility of exchange and change, be it baking bread in the street, exploring a city with a pony or transforming a government building into a therapeutic space. The final destination is often undetermined and undefined but the mindful journey has purpose. The observations I gather are transformed into actions, games, play spaces, maps and tools. I readily share this fluidity of materials and ideas with others to uncover other ways of seeing and doing, by going beyond the limits of my own perceptions. The core principles of my approach are to remain open to spontaneity, friction, failure and adapting to the nuances of what I find rather than imposing rigid methods to stereotyped expectations.

Visit Sinead Bhreathnach-Cashell website here

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