Niamh Mairead Cullen Dunphy

I use my practice to help consider how personal experience can be a portal to existential truth. Whether it presents itself in the form of the transformative nature of significant tragedy or suffering, in the purity of the joy felt in moments of sincere presence and gratitude, or in the peace of the rhythmic mundane; truth wears the disguise of these ephemeral phenomena, waiting eagerly to be recognised.

Creative practice is just a tool, to help present and navigate the space for me to confront myself over and over again, to aid in the processes of introspection. Though the starting point is often reflection upon personal experience, the aim is always to trace my way back to the universal.

This specific collection of works also refer to the cyclical nature of being, wherein everything is transient and the certainty of any fixed point or resolution is unattainable. At the core of my practice lies an awe for the sacred, which I define as all things that bring us closer to truth, including that which we experience as being unbearable.