Sculpture - Academic Staff Profiles

Pauline Cummins
Lecturer, Fine Art Sculpture

Pauline Cummins has worked through the media of photography, sound, text and video since the early Eighties. Her work often contains a sensuality, which she uses to explore questions of Identity and Gender.

She grew up in Dublin, but has traveled extensively, working for a year with the Turkana tribe in Northern Kenya in the Seventies and living and working in Toronto, Canada in the Eighties.

She has exhibited in the US and Canada, Germany, Denmark, Britain and the Netherlands as well as being involved in the Irish art world. She was the founding chairperson of WAAG, the Women Artists Action Group, which helped to promote the work of Irish artists in Ireland and throughout Europe.

Cummins now lives and works in Wicklow and teaches at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin.

Research Interests

Pauline Cummins will begin the second stage of an National project to introduce and encourage the use of multimedia, in national and secondary schools. The second stage is a multimedia project with art teachers already placed in Secondary schools in Mayo. There have been 4 projects so far:

In Blessington Wicklow , Ballyfermot and West Tallaght, Dublin, the current project is in Castlebar, Co.Mayo.

External Project Work:

Research: The Visual and Perfomative qualities displayed in Irish American Social and Political Parades. This is a project with American writer,Kathleen Walsh D’Arcy which explores the history of Irish County Associations in New York.

Participation in Selection / Award Committees:

Artist Selector for Wicklow County Council newly designed 3 part selection especially designed to encourage the use of multimedia, to allow access to all the community, and to encourage collaboration between artists using performance and diverse media.

Recent Catalogues and publications:

‘And the One Doesn’t Stir without the Other’ Catalogue with forward by Whitney Chadwick. Ormeau Baths Gallery 2005.

Recent Research Actions:

Meeting and collaboration with Canadian artist Sandra Vida in Annamakerrig Co Monaghan. 2006

Collaborative sound and video work with Catalan Poet, Gemma Gorga. 2006

Planned future research

Collaborative work with recent graduates, from the MA Fine Art programme in NCAD 2004 -2006. The aim is a collaborative project Consumer, part of which analyses the MA Programme to reflect its perceived aims, successes and failures.

Participation in the ‘Portraits of Pain’ research project where artists attempt to portray the pain experienced by sufferers of neuropathic pain.