I document queer youth through my interactions, stumbling around Northern Ireland, driven by a hazy aesthetic I invite the viewer to submerge into a world of my bleared emotions. Using lo-fi techniques to create an unpolished form with 35mm format photography, painting and multimedia elements, colours glaze over dark backdrops and I immerse into a self-constructed personalised fantasy. As a young queer female artist, examining my own existence and the imprints I have made takes place continually throughout my work, as a lingering subconscious echo. Reacting to my intrapersonal conflict I use photography as a way of documenting, validating the existence of my thoughts, with painting and experimental media I address my underlying intrusive thoughts.
Though much of my work is personal, emotional and ties to inner issues, I cannot escape the climate, environment and identity that I exhibit and are influenced by. The decision to open up this extremely personal monologue, now shared with audiences is becoming a strange form of catharsis, creating and displaying outwardly the visual narrative of queer female sadness, mental illness and grievance from Northern Ireland is radical in itself.
About the work:
‘This Hurts’ is a multimedia series that uses analogue images, painting and silk screen printing to translate heavy emotions through colour saturated images. Creating bleared lines between anxiety fuelled dreams using experimental double exposures, hallucinogenic atmospheres, soft focus and deep tones fuse the subject and backdrop in Gillespie’s images before whipping it back to sun glazed scenes settling into a fugue state.
Audrey Gillespie is an Irish fine artist from Derry, Northern Ireland. Currently living and creating in Belfast N.I. Her media include analogue photography, painting and printmaking. Gillespie’s themes explore queerness, mortality and conflict with youth and anxiety in her current series ‘This Hurts’.
This exhibition is curated by Gregory McCartney. Thanks to Audrey Gillespie.
This exhibition is funded by Derry City and Strabane District Council.
