How as human beings we unconsciously accumulate knowledge through our interaction with our environment, especially the built environment and how that has played out through history in terms of architecture and engineering – frequently provides the starting point for McNulty’s artworks.
Through research, McNulty looks for new frameworks for activity, to create works which propose a new kind of relationship to time and space, to histories, as well as our bodily experience of such forms.

Embodied Knowledge is a term that’s used to describe the knowledge we accumulate unconsciously through our interaction with our environment. With a focus on in the relationship between Embodied Knowledge and more formally or deliberately acquired knowledge Dennis McNulty has a specific interest in the context of the built environment as a space where this relationship plays out. We inhabit spaces which are designed with certain intentions. Consequently, the processes of design and planning, and the history of the practices of architecture and engineering, as well as alternatives to, and critiques of these practices, frequently serve as points of departure in his work. McNulty makes video works, sound works and installations, and in recent years, has produced a number of complex multi-layered performance works. These works are, among other things, an attempt to find a new form, a framework for activity which tries to produce a new kind of relationship to time and space, to histories and to the bodies of the audience members. Dennis McNulty’s work is conceptually and research driven, often taking hybrid forms which draw on aspects of cinema, sculpture, sound and performance.

McNulty represented Ireland at the São Paulo Bienal with his project alpha60.info. Solo shows include TTOPOLOGY at Visual, Carlow (2018) and PROTOTYPES at The Limerick City Gallery of Art (2014). In 2011 McNulty produced a performance piece entitled ‘The Eyes of Ayn Rand’ for Performa 11 in New York.