Emma Brennan and Thomas Wells—The House of Atreus

The House of Atreus* is a collaborative project by Emma Brennan and Thomas Wells exploring how working class architecture reflects contemporary social and moral systems. This partnering of experiences intersects gendered labour practices, working-class identity and the entanglement of domestic and industrial spaces. 

Drawing on their collective social histories such as migrations of Irish workers across UK industrial cities, the housing crisis, tax incentives for tech giants, the post pandemic cost of living crisis and post Celtic Tiger recession, the project positions labour in all its forms as both subject and material. It engages with hierarchies that continue to shape cultural value systems in Ireland and the UK, while situating the live body inside architectures of gender, class, and capital. 

The House of Atreus confronts how identity, labour, and space are constructed and contested under capitalism. The action leaves behind a sculptural residue that transforms the performance site into a charged hybrid of architectures. First performed as part of FIX25, live art biennale, Belfast and succeeded by a longer form project at Pallas Projects Dublin as one of their Artist-Initiated Projects 2026. 

Using site and time as materials, this iteration of The House of Atreus incorporates modes of facilitation, discussion, performative and sculptural elements and residue from past iterations to build a framework on which the project can evolve over the 3 week exhibition timeline. 

The House of Atreus situates itself within wider discourses of how bodies inhabit and contest space. Drawing from MYCKET’s queer feminist performative architectures and queer Marxist critiques of factory labour, the project engages with how gender, sexuality, and identity are regulated and exploited under capitalism. 

By weaving together histories of Irish and UK industrial cities, migration, exploitation, and resilience, the project also reflects on the new economies shaping post-crash Ireland. Cultural references such as CMAT’s Euro-Country capture the anti-romantic post-Celtic Tiger era that Brennan and Wells themselves entered ‘The Workforce’. 

Echoing its mythological namesake, the project treats architecture not as a neutral backdrop but as a site where social, political, and moral systems are inscribed.

*Greek mythological dynasty plagued by a curse of mistrust and suffering that culminates in its downfall, this myth illustrates how architecture reflects the moral failings of its inhabitants.

Biographies:

Emma Brennan (She/Her) is an interdisciplinary artist working predominantly in performative practices including multi-media installation, moving image and collaborative processes. Based in Belfast and originally from Dublin, her practice finds public outcomes in exhibitions and festivals locally, nationally and internationally. Brennan is a current board member of Beyond, Belfast and Live Art Ireland, Tipperary. She is also the founder of QRIT Belfast, a queer crit group. Brennan is a former Co-Director of Catalyst Arts Belfast. She is a current member of the 2025/26 cohort for the Freelands Foundation Syllabus programme. 

Brennan’s practice engages the multiplicities and nuances of Irish identity through a Queer Feminist lens. From our oral histories and the embedded presence of the grotesque in our mythology, to the current context of a post colonial Ireland under capitalism, Brennan challenges and dissects her position as an artist in relation to these contexts within her work. Recent works include Girls Who Like Beuys (2025) at Ulster Museum,  her solo exhibition It Is & I Am (2024) at Belfast Exposed Gallery, MANTLE (2024), Riddles Warehouse with Catalyst Arts.

emmabrennanartist.com | emma_breadman

Thomas Wells (he/they) is an independent Artist and Curator based in Belfast working in socially engaged performance practice that often utilises public events and social gatherings as vehicles for story telling that impact visibility and representation of LGBTQIA+ shared experience. Research and archive led, these performances, events and exhibitions often fixate on characters or objects from history that have impacted queer cultural life, reflecting social change through arts, culture and activism. Thomas is particularly interested in how these artefacts resonate through the social psyche and how these can be transferred through live performance. These actions are intimate modes of communication and learning and can help to shape/re-shape communities especially at times of social and political threat to LGBTQIA+ rights globally. Through archival research semi devised scores are created to use as a guide for performance with space for diversion and improvisation. 

In 2025 they began ‘A Queer Dander’ an LGBTQIA+ project documenting the history of Belfast Pride established in 1991, two years prior to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Northern Ireland. Other recent projects include, It Turned Out Nice Again (Outburst Queer Arts Festival 2024) a research project into queer working class nostalgia and biography.  Thomas is currently Artist in Residency at Platt Hall Manchester, and member of Array Collective who create large scale collaborative actions in response to sociopolitical issues affecting the north of Ireland.

thomaswells.me | myspecialistsubject

Artist-Initiated Projects at Pallas Projects/Studios is an open-submission, annual gallery programme of 8 x 3-week exhibitions taking place from January - December 2026. This unique programme of funded, artist-initiated projects selected via open call is highly accessible to artists, with a focus on early career, emerging artists and recent graduates. Projects are supplemented with artists' talks, texts, workshops or performances, and gallery visits by colleges and local schools.