Sinéad Kempley

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13.09.24
Residency Opening @ mote102, Leith, Edinburgh

Sinéad Kempley is an interdisciplinary artist, educator and researcher, based in Northumberland. Through material-led research with remnants and residues, her practice engages with the depletion and transformation of matter. She uses site-responsive methods in the development of practice and works produced as part of this take the form of provisional assemblages and installations. Recent work has centered on semi-fictionialised subterranean realms, such as drainage infrastructure, burrows, or aquifers, with a focus on the movement of misbehaving materials, such as degreasing chemicals or floral foam particles, through hidden flows and non-human communities.

Her funded PhD research looks at the use of fiction-as-method in contemporary art practice and speculates on how this could be used in the study of waste and wasting. It then considers how employing a fictioning-based practice in a participatory context can be used to expand public discussions on waste and pollution with artists, educators, and children across diverse UK contexts. The waste she focuses on consists of by-products of industry and fossil-fuel-derived materials with particular attention given to how these materials disintegrate, leak, merge, soak, and seep.

Email: sineadkempley@gmail.com

Selected Group Exhibitions & Installations
Peripheral Acts w/ Miriam Hancill, Sculpture Court, ECA, October 2023
An Elastic Continuum, S1 Artspace, June 2023
No Longer Viable, Hidden Door Arts Festival, June 2023
Risk Averse, Art and Design PhD Symposium, Edinburgh College of Art, December 2022
Temporary Sediment Storage, Edinburgh College of Art Contemporary Art Practice MA Graduate Show, August 2022
Salt Lick, Whitespace Gallery, Edinburgh, July 2022
Tough Crowd, Whitespace Gallery, Edinburgh, May 2022
An Unravelling, Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh, March 2022
First Marks, Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh, November 2021

Artist Talks and Conferences
Radical Repetition stream, London Conference in Critical Thought, UK, June 2023
An Elastic Continuum Symposium, s1 Artspace, Sheffield, UK, June 2023
Sounds of Making interview and audio exchange project, Surface Matters, online, September 2021

Roles
2023-ongoing Studio Tutor, Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Edinburgh College of Art

Education
2022-2025 PhD, Edinburgh College of Art
2020-2022 Masters in Contemporary Art Practice (Distinction), Edinburgh College of Art
2011-2014 BA Photography (First Class Honours), London College of Communication
2010-2011 Foundation in Art and Design, Camberwell College of Art

Awards and Scholarships
College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences College Research Award awarded by Edinburgh College of Art, 2022-2025
Andrew Grant Postgraduate Scholarship, 2020
Sinéad Kempley
© 2023