The ISACS Network is delighted to announce Nicola Moran as the selected artist for the 2023 edition of the ISACS and Áras Éanna Ionad Ealaíne Residency for ISACS Artists.
About Nicola
Nicola Moran is an interdisciplinary artist and a youth and social circus coordinator for the Dublin Circus Project. She earned her BA in Fine and Applied Art from the University of Ulster, Belfast and specialized as a silversmith. Nicola works professionally as a freelance artist and collaborator across many artistic platforms, including sculpture, acrobatics and aerial dance. She creates bespoke shows and performs independently and with companies, touring both nationally and internationally. Nicola’s independent research involves the exploration of alchemical female surrealism, sculpture and circus. Her most recent independent aerial commission was Revolve and Revolution for Brigit, Dublin City Celebrating Women Festival, 2023, a vertical dance spectacle that received national attention.
At present, Nicola is working as a specialised movement artist for a feature film due for release next summer.
Here is what she hopes to gain from the residency:
I am founder and Director of newly formed Bockety Bodies, a contemporary circus collective fusing ground-based acrobatics and performance art with land, imagination and empathy.
My recent research took me to the magical landscape of the Connemara bog. I am interested in how I can use body and land to touch on the insidious legacy of colonialism, church, state and social dynamics in Ireland that has affected women in Ireland disproportionately. I invited two artists Ali Stanger and Aoife Raleigh to explore these themes with me through acrobatics and film. Within this residency, I would like to use the time to decompress and reflect on our work thus far. I will have the final edit of the film for October and would like to screen it on the island for the locals to view and to give feedback or thoughts on it.
Another aspect of the research is sound. Caoineadh/Keening, a grief ritual, came up in our research so I am interested in speaking with locals to see if they have experience or references to it. Artist Chris Somers will join me on the residency, and we will work together on recording sounds of landscape, people and other musicians to create something for a potential showing.
My aspiration for this research is to create a live show in the bog, using the land and sky for visible symbols of invisible shifts in consciousness, to utilize circus skills to abstract the female form, creating snapshots centered on the strength, vulnerability, protection and weight of social constructs. This residency would be a huge benefit on navigating those next steps from film to live performance