Night Class (2023-2024) is a series of sculptural interventions and photographs that make visible alternative forms of labour and knowledge. 

Produced onsite at the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork over the course of a year, the work responds to the institution’s hidden archives from its era as a School of Art (1832-1979).  During this time, professional photographers were periodically hired to stage and document examples of painting, sculpture and lace making. These images of fine art student’s labour were printed in the aspirational prospectuses promoting the work of the institution and primarily constitutes its formal history. I was drawn to the archive’s quietly forgotten register of technical classes, such as building construction, carpentry and painting and decorating, which often took place at night. Night Class also represents a personal performance. Entering the building with a camera at night alongside the gallery’s caretakers and cleaning staff, I immersed myself in the nocturnal rhythms of the gallery, learning to construct, reframe, stage and document the remnants of past actions - a night class of my own.

The site-specific installation of these works at Crawford Gallery of Art in Cork (13th April - 9th June 2024) creates a temporary formal space within the institution where these previously undocumented forms of labour are acknowledged. Works in the exhibition also explore the fabric of the building itself; the interventions and the skilled work of technicians and caretakers that have been part of the building’s maintenance for over a hundred years.

Night Class was commissioned by the Crawford Art Gallery as part of Building As Witness, which is kindly supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media under the Decade of Centenaries Programme 2012-2023. The exhibition was generously supported through funding provided by Arts Council Ireland and the Making and Momentum [In Conversation with Eileen Gray] Artist Bursary.