Mutualism

The Courthouse Gallery & Studios, Ennistymon, Co. Clare, Dec. 2024 - Feb. 2025 

Curated by Simon Fennessy Corcoran 

MUTUALISM is an immersive ecofeminist installation by artists Rayleen Clancy and Beatrice O’Connell, combining moving image and sculptural assemblage. First exhibited at The Courthouse Gallery and Studios, Ennistymon (Dec 2024 – Feb 2025), the project constructs a tactile, speculative ecology where human, animal, and vegetal energies merge within a submerged, swamp-like world, built from salvaged foam, cardboard, camouflage netting, shoreline debris, and found materials.

At the heart of the installation is a surreal experimental film, following an overwhelmed housewife whose mundane routines collapse into a portal inside her washing machine, transporting her into otherworldly environments. Her journey becomes a passage across multiple borders: from domestic servitude to a realm of shared care and symbiotic existence. Through found footage, salvaged materials, and embodied storytelling, MUTUALISM challenges not only the physical boundaries of three-dimensional existence but also the patriarchal structures that culturally confine women within gendered labour roles.

Drawing on Ireland’s folkloric heritage, particularly the figure of the Síle na Gig as a symbol of divine feminine power, the work proposes that transformation is possible through a reimagining of myth, memory, and cultural reclamation. MUTUALISM suggests that the rewriting of suppressed narratives can resist both patriarchal and colonial frameworks, offering paths toward collective renewal and imaginative resistance.