Bio
Judy Foley has an interdisciplinary background rooted in art practice and science. She worked in the pharmaceutical industry in the area of analytical chemistry before returning to college to study art. She holds an MA Art & Research Collaboration and BA Visual Arts Practice from IADT and a BSc Chemistry, UCC. Most recently she was selected for PULSE, Emerging artists at LCGA where she was recipient of the main award from The Irish research Council (2022). In 2021 she participated in Woman and the Machine, co curated by VISUAL Carlow and Carlow Arts Festival, and was awarded the Eigse Graduate Prize. In 2018/19 she undertook a residency placement with Trinity Bioengineering/AMBER in TCD and was recipient of the Trinity Performing and Visual Arts award, culminating in a solo show, Foreign Body, at The O’Reilly Institute, TCD (2019). Selected group exhibitions include Ex Voto: The Body + The Institution, Galway Arts Centre (2018) and Holding Together, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2010). Work has been selected for RHA Annual Exhibition (2022, 2020) and Winter Open Rua Red, Dublin (2019).
Artist Statement
Judy Foley’s practice engages with the speciality of medical intervention, in particular, the medical device industry. She is drawn to the meticulous methods of surgical procedure and also the processes of precision handcraft that are integral to the manufacture of many high-tech medical implants. Underpinning her research is a thinking around the inherent divisibility of the human form where the posthuman body becomes an entity that can be broken down to a sum of parts. She is interested in the ontological status of these parts; the implants and devices that reside within the body and also in turn, the entities that become separated from the body as a consequence of surgical resection. The work she makes is characterised by small scale structures and drawings and a methodology centred on a painstaking and delicate labour.