Martin Healy

Martin Healy works with photography, film and sculpture to explore the cultural and symbolic paradigms that underpin human mythologies and belief systems. The ideological and cultural imperatives used to shape our concept of ‘nature’ is a focus for much of his work and he is interested in finding ways to reimagine our relationship with the natural world – particularly in attempting to find ways to convey animal perspectives that do not fall into familiar tropes of ‘nature representation’. Cognisant of the fact that many of these tropes are constructed through the camera, his work consciously avoids hyper-real modes of representation, allowing the distance between himself and the animal become a part of my work.

In his photographic work, museum taxidermy collections, formal gardens and animal species are all assembled into loosely shifting taxonomies, to highlight the mechanisms that govern how knowledge of the natural world is accrued. These efforts to instrumentalise ‘nature’ – to recast it in a familiar pictorial language – underlines our desire for an idealised image that keeps the reality of the natural world at a distance. Projects often explore the mythologies embedded in animal species and how these are represented in culture and touch on elements of environmentalism, species conservation and ornithological research. 

Recent exhibitions/screenings include: A Moment Twice Lived, Crawford Gallery screening room, 2024: Groundworks, Climate awareness in the UCC Art Collection, Glucksman Gallery, 2024; A Moment Twice Lived, screening at IFI in conjunction with AEMI and East Asia Film Festival Ireland, 2023; Yugen, CCA Andratx, Mallorca, 2022; Opening the Gates - Photo Ireland Festival, Dublin Castle, Dublin, 2022; Park Life, Glucksman Gallery, UCC, Cork, 2022.