Photographer, interdisciplinary artist, arts professional and former archaeologist based in County Cork, Ireland.

“My photographic work is now almost entirely restricted to 35mm and medium format analogue processes. This is supplemented on a project by project basis, where appropriate and practical, by digital photography in addition to digital video. Sound recording also forms part of my art practice, both as stand alone audio work or in conjunction with video and photography.

Through my art practice I follow investigative lines of enquiry to gain insight into a subject. I do this in response to a perceived human subject absent in a space. Each successive investigation informs part of an expanded enquiry into the interrelationship between anteriority (what has gone before in time), absence and affect, specifically its influence on me but also human behaviour in general. To date I have examined this interrelationship through the documentation of domestic and industrial spaces, marginalised environments associated with death and the body and sites of historical significance and commemoration. More recently my focus has shifted to less loaded and more convenient environments such as rural and suburban areas as well as urban retail spaces.

My chosen methodologies are influenced by a former career as an archaeologist but no longer bound by the conventions of that discipline. In some cases salvaged archive and artefacts inform and become part of artistic processes and outputs. The aesthetic and means of display for each investigation serve to create a unique record whilst also provoking engagement with an open and incomplete archive or catalogue of sites. In contrast to documentary narrative, I am interested in how information and its representation can be re-imagined within the context of the contemporary museum or gallery, or in an alternative site of engagement.”

Brian Mac Domhnaill holds a first class honours MA in Art & Process from CIT Crawford College of Art & Design, 2014; an MSc in Palaeoecology from Queens University Belfast, 2001 and a BA in Archaeology and Celtic Civilisation from University College Cork, 1997.

Since 2015 Brian has been part of a cross-disciplinary team on The Pallasboy Project, which explores the creative process involved in the crafting of prehistoric wooden artefacts. He was a studio member of the Cork Artists Collective 2016-2019 and now works from his home studio in ‘Middle Cork’.

Awards include an Individual Artist Bursary Award from the Arts Council of Ireland 2021, an Artist Commission for the Archives of Us: Cork 1918-1922 project awarded by Cork City Council Arts Office as part of the Creative Ireland Programme 2019 and the Cork City Council Individual Artists Bursary 2017.

Exhibitions include Citizen Nowhere | Citizen Somewhere: The Imagined Nation at the Crawford Art Gallery 2020, ‘After Paul Henry’ with Paul McKenna and Gentian Lulanaj at Ballymaloe Grainstore 2015, Cork Photo Festival with John Sunderland at Cork Public Museum 2015 and ‘The Land of Zero’ exhibition and project curated by Maud Cotter and Pluck Projects at Crawford Art Gallery 2014. Exhibitions in the role of curator: ‘Royal Cork Yacht Club, Queenstown/Cobh, 1854–1966’; ‘School Days: Cobh & Great Island’ and ‘Spike Island: People and Place 1847-1883’ at Sirius Arts Centre, ‘Excerpts: Clippings From The Backwater Vaults’ at Backwater Artists Group and ‘Light Proof’ at Cork Printmakers.

Brian is Director of Lavit Gallery, Cork and previously filled the professional roles of Programme & Operations Manager at Sirius Arts Centre and Studio Coordinator at Backwater Artists Group.