About

Rayleen Clancy is a multidisciplinary artist based in County Waterford, Ireland, working across stained glass, moving image, sculpture, performance and installation. Her practice explores speculative folklore, feminist resistance and metaphysical inquiry, creating immersive environments that merge myth, magic and contemporary critique.

Her current project, Wild Wisdom from a Grúagach’s Lair, reclaims domestic space as a site of self-determination and imaginative resistance. Centring on the Grúagach, a shape-shifting hairy woman from Irish folklore aligned with the grotesque archetype of the monstrous feminine, the work challenges how domestic environments have been policed, neutralised and commodified under patriarchal capitalism. Clancy employs saturated colour, maximalist aesthetics and luminous stained glass as strategies of refusal, positioning ornament and abundance as radical tools of agency.

Working with kiln-fired painted glass, assemblage, found materials and layered moving image, she creates lairs that oscillate between chaos and comfort, trauma and humour, isolation and kinship. These hybrid spaces are guided by animist logic and a belief in the transformative power of the imagination. They invite the viewer into atmospheres of magic and possibility, where overlooked knowledge and wild forms of wisdom take root.

Clancy’s work is held in the collections of Glasmuseum Lette in Germany, the Office of Public Works, the Waterford Municipal Collection and Waterford Healing Arts. Recent and upcoming exhibitions include Periodical Review at Pallas Projects, Dublin (2023), the Irish Glass Biennale at Dublin Castle (2023), Homeland at Damer House Gallery and LOOP Festival, Barcelona (2025), and Wild Wisdom from a Grúagach’s Lair at GOMA, Waterford (2026).