Clare Langan
Alchemy, 2023
HDV with 5.1 surround sound;16 mins, 12 secs

In the aftermath of a pandemic and a time of numerous climate crises, Clare Langan’s epic work Alchemy (2023) symbolises an alchemical change that is necessary for the human species and the planet to survive. This sensory-rich film of provoking visuals and original music, takes the viewer through a journey of narrative transformation and revolution. The visuals are shot by Oscar nominated cinematographer Robbie Ryan and Clare Langan, with an original score by Gyða Valtýsdóttir and soundscape by Daniel Goddard.

The screening of Clare Langan’s Alchemy marks the official launch and celebration of Living Canvas at IMMA

About the artist
Clare Langan studied Fine Art at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin and with a Fulbright Scholarship, completed a film workshop at NYU. In 2017, Langan was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from The National University of Ireland. In 2019, the artist was elected a member of Aosdána. She has represented Ireland in numerous international Biennales, including the 25th Bienal de Sao Paulo, 2002 Brazil; The Liverpool Biennial – International 2002, Tate Liverpool: Sounds and Visions, Art Film and Video from Europe, 2009, Museum of Modern Art, Tel Aviv; Singapore Biennial 2008; Dojima River Biennale 2009, Osaka Japan; Busan Biennale 2010, South Korea and B3 Biennial of the Moving Image, Frankfurt 2017. In 2003 Langan presented A Film Trilogy at MoMA in New York and at the RHA, Dublin.

In 2023, At the Gates of Silent Memory, curated by Eamonn Maxwell was exhibited at The Luan Gallery Athlone. It was accompanied by a publication with an in-conversation with Mary Mc Carthy, Director of the Crawford Gallery of Art. Two of her films were recently purchased by The Crawford Gallery of Art for the National Collection. Other exhibitions in 2023 include her solo exhibition The New Dawn Fades, at The Golden Thread Gallery Belfast; The Voyage Out – Clare Langan, Ulla Schildt & Tonje Bøe Birkeland at Gyldenpris Kunsthall, Norway; solo photography exhibition Elizium Sarah Walker Gallery and  8 Alba curated by Carolina Ciuti at Dimora delle Balze, Sicily.

In 2022, her work was shown in Kunsthaus Kaufbeuren, Germany, as well as numerous film festivals worldwide with the release of The Rewilding. In 2020, her film The Heart of a Tree premiered at Kino Der Kunst Munich, where it was acquired by the prestigious Fondazione In Between Art and Film Rome. They commissioned an essay by Teresa Castro, examining the film in a wider conversation, as part of their series STILL- Studies on Moving Images. Flight from the City was selected by the Crawford Gallery for Artists Film International (AFI), which toured worldwide through 2021 to Whitechapel Gallery, London, Hammer Museum, LA, NBK, Berlin, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, Ballroom Marfa, Texas, and The Museum of Modern Art, Moscow.

The Heart of a Tree 1 won The Progressive Vision Curtin O’ Donoghue Photography Prize at The RHA Annual Exhibition 2022. She was featured on RTE’s The Works Presents, interviewed by John Kelly, in 2022. Her films have won numerous awards including the Principle Prize at the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, Germany 2007, and the Prix Videoformes Award 2013, France.

Langan’s films and photographs are in a number of international public and private collections including IMMA, The Crawford Gallery of Art, The Arts Council of Ireland, Fondazione In Between Art and Film, Rome, The Office of Public Works, the Tony Podesta Private Collection, Washington, and the Hugo and Carla Brown Collection, UK. She has undertaken numerous public art commissions including NUI Maynooth and Castletown House. Langan’s current project Earthbound 2025 is in production.

Contributor details
Director, Clare Langan
Cinematography, Robbie Ryan, Clare Langan
Choreographer, Maria Nilsson Waller
Performers, Maria Nilsson Waller, Luke Murphy, Eilise Sullivan,
Editing and Sound Design, Daniel Goddard
Original Score, Gyða Valtýsdóttir
Producer, Aideen O’Sullivan
Costume Designer, Tara Van Zyl
Music Mixed by Gyða Valtýsdóttir and Úlfur Hansson
Executive Producer, Edwina Forkin
Postproduction, Outer Limits
Artists’ Assistant, Chloe Austin
Funded by The Arts Council of Ireland
Copyright Clare Langan 2023

The three films – Susan Thomson, The Swimming Diaries (2024), Pådraic Barrett, Body Signal (2020) and Atoosa Pour Hosseini, Last Phase (2014) – are screened as part of Living Canvas at IMMA, to coincide with the opening of the group exhibition Staying with the Trouble, which runs in the Main Galleries at IMMA from 2 May until 21 September 2025. The exhibition Staying with the Trouble is inspired by author and philosopher Donna Haraway’s seminal work of the same name, and features over forty contemporary artists whose diverse practices explore urgent themes of our time

Films in order of appearance:
Susan Thomson, The Swimming Diaries,(2024), 100 minutes
Pådraic Barrett, Body Signal, (2020), 2:26 minutes
Atoosa Pour Hosseini, Last Phase,(2014), 1:56 minutes<

Susan Thomson
The Swimming Diaries, (2024)
Colour and sound, 100 minutes, dir. Susan Thomson
A Reel Art Film funded by the Arts Council of Ireland
Shot on Alexa mini (Cooke lenses), RED 8K underwater

The Swimming Diaries originated as a book, a memoir exactly 25,000 words long, with each word representing one of the 25,000 metres or strokes swum by Susan Thomson during the month when her mother was dying. The film translates the book back into movement, hovering between experimental documentary and contemporary opera to trace a journey from life to death. Thomson’s moving tribute, a feminist exploration of matrilineal creativity, is at times surreal – conjuring the effects of morphine taken in the last stages of illness, as it interweaves choral, orchestral and pop music, and a mosaic of underwater imagery, dance sequences and archive video of musicals directed by her mother.

The Swimming Diaries premiered at the Dublin International Film Festival in 2024. The soundtrack album, by composer Donna McKevitt, was released by Dharma records and has been played extensively, including on BBC Radio Night Tracks, RTE Lyric FM, Scala and Soho radio. The film features cinematography by IFTA winning Director of Photography Piers McGrail, performances from dancer Isabella Oberländer and actor Richard Thomson, and choreography by Mufutau Yusuf. The Swimming Diaries book on which the film is based, was exhibited and sold at Artbook@PS1 MoMA, New York, for many years.

About the artist
Susan Thomson is a writer, visual artist and filmmaker working across the formal boundaries of film, visual art and literature. Known for her long-running film series Ghost Empire (2013–2025), the work explores postcolonial LGBTQ+ issues and legal challenges to British colonial anti-gay laws. Supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, the films are distributed by Utopia Docs and available on ProQuest. The latest instalment, Ghost Empire § Mauritius-Chagos (2025), premieres at the Leeds Queer Film Festival, while Ghost Empire § Belize (2021) won multiple IndieFEST and ImpactDOCS awards. The series has screened at festivals and universities worldwide, including Yale NUS, UPenn, and Edinburgh University.

Beyond filmmaking, Thomson has held artist residencies, including with the British Council Plural program in Brazil (2022), where she directed Tybyra and the Harlequin (2022), exploring Indigenous rights and LGBTQ+ themes. She was also filmmaker-in-residence at Sussex University’s Centre for World Environmental History, creating Janaki Ammal and the Genetical Society (2023), which premiered at the Museum of India, Kolkata. Academically, Thomson holds an MA in Modern Languages (Cambridge), an MFA (IADT Dublin), and an MA in European Literature (Oxford). She has contributed to publications like Circa, IMMA Magazine, Women’s News, GCN, and JSTOR. A dual Irish-Scottish national, she was part of the Troubling Ireland Think Tank and has exhibited work at Tate Modern, Artbook@PS1 MoMA, and X Initiative New York.

Pádraic Barrett
Body Signal, (2020)
HD, silent, 2:26 minutes

Body Signal is a performance-based film that explores the entanglement between the human body, landscape, and surveillance technology. Captured from an aerial perspective by a drone, the film follows the body as it crawls through a meandering wetland, exposing the traces left behind through movement and intervention. The work draws attention to how both bodies and landscapes are subjected to observation and control, raising questions about agency, visibility, and the impact of technology on lived experience.

In the film, through its slow, aimless movement, the body appears lost, searching for direction in an uncertain and shifting terrain, evoking a sense of disorientation in a world where human and nonhuman forces collide. The wetland becomes both a site of passage and a record of impact, underscoring the fragile relationship between presence and disappearance. The film asks how bodies navigate an era of ecological collapse and perpetual surveillance, highlighting the paradox of hyper-visibility in a time of both environmental and personal precarity.

About the artist
Pádraic Barrett is an interdisciplinary Irish artist who works across performance, film, and installation to explore contemporary issues such as techno-capitalism, surveillance, and human agency. Originally from Kerry and based in Cork, he holds an MA in Art and Process (2021) and a BA in Fine Art (2019) from the Crawford College of Art and Design. His practice integrates sculptural installations, performance-based media, and collaborative methodologies to critically engage with societal structures.
Barrett’s work has been exhibited internationally, with recent solo shows including Machination at the Municipal Corporation of Culture of San Joaquin in Santiago, Chile (2023) and The Engineering of Consent II at The Marina Warehouse in Cork (2021). His recent projects include ⌥ertigo, A Crescendo (2025), funded by the Arts Council of Ireland Project Award, and Error:   /Undefined (2023), presented as part of Pallas Projects’ Artist-Initiated Projects. Barrett is also a founding member of inter_site, an artist collective focused on site-responsive and collaborative practice. He has exhibited widely across Ireland, the UK, Germany, and Portugal in both solo and group exhibitions.

A recipient of multiple awards from the Arts Council of Ireland and Cork City Council, Barrett has participated in international residencies at GlogauAIR in Berlin and PADA Studios in Lisbon. His work has been featured in public art festivals and gallery settings, gaining recognition for its innovative use of space and narrative. In addition, Barrett shares his insights through visiting lectures at institutions like the Crawford College of Art and Design, engaging students in dialogue about art’s role in sociopolitical critique.

Atoosa Pour Hosseini
Last Phase (2014)
HD, colour, sound, 1:56 minutes
White rock, Killiney, Dublin, Ireland, 2014
Camera, edit, and sound: Atoosa Pour Hosseini

When engaging with the film Last Phase, one is immersed in the experience of being submerged and emerging.Through a moving image that is at once appearing and disappearing, it revolves around this tension between two distinct conditions.

About the artist
Atoosa Pour Hosseini is an Iranian-Irish visual artist and filmmaker based in Dublin, Ireland. She makes film, performance, installation, and sculpture to explore the influence of history and culture on the perception of reality and illusion. The underlying aim of her projects is to create a contemporary dialogue and forge new links between geographical and cultural zones, and amplified experience of being in the world.

Pour Hosseini has shown her work extensively at several galleries, museums, festivals, around the world and won numerous awards nationally and internationally. Recent exhibitions and screenings include Kino Central, and Bethanien TCS Festival, Berlin (2024); Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin (2023); Irish Museum of Modern Art (2023); National Concert Hall, Dublin (2023); The Model, Sligo (2022); Project Arts Centre, Dublin (2021); Jeu de Paume Museum, Paris (2021); The LAB, Dublin (2018); Museum of the Moving Image, New York (2017); LUFF festival, Switzerland (2019 and 2017); Irish Film Institute (2017 and 2016); Cork Film Festival (2018 and 2017); Thai Film Archive, Bangkok (2018); WORM, Rotterdam (2018); The National Cineteca of Mexico (2017); Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro (2016); and Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran (2015).

In 2024, Atoosa Pour Hosseini was awarded residencies at Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, and Centre Culturel Irlandais (CCI), Paris. Previously residencies include Sirius Art Centre, Cobh Co.Cork in 2021; The Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Co. Monaghan in 2019; and Lichtenberg Studios, Berlin in 2016. She has received support for her practice from the Arts Council of Ireland, Culture Ireland and Dublin City Council. Her work has featured and been reviewed in, MUBI Notebook, Winter Papers, Visual Artists Ireland, The Irish Times, RTÉ Culture, Totally Dublin, as well in various international art and film journals. Pour Hosseini’s work has also been included as a subject in several academic research studies.

The artist’s monograph, Atoosa Pour Hosseini 2011-2021, was published by Oonagh Young Gallery (2022). Pour Hosseini’s work is held in the collections of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Arts Council of Ireland, and International Institutes as well as private collections.