Hazel O’Sullivan

Hazel O’Sullivan is a multi-disciplinary visual artist from Co. Meath currently based in London working in sculpture and painting. She examines discourse around cultural identity from an Irish perspective by imagining artefacts, devices and mythological architectures within an immersive retrofuturistic narrative.

Her multi-disciplinary sculptures bring together a collage of domestic materials from the surroundings she remembers as a child, combined with technological forms and hard-edged surfaces to create new forms for a nostalgic future. In painting, she makes architectural compositions that depict her interpretation of forts and mechanisms that open gateways to the mythological Otherworld, as a way to connect with pre-colonisation and imagine new architecture for decolonisation in mythology. Her configurations are inspired by the compositions of insular art from medieval Celtic manuscripts, which she has reimagined as deconsecrated architecture alongside device-like sculptures with inspiration from atomic and space age design. She approaches each project she investigates in a unique way by adapting her materials for site-specificity, with colours and materials symbolic to aspects of Irish heritage.’

Residency Project Idea

On this residency, she wants to take the time to explore furniture design, and create hybrid artworks that pose simultaneously as furnitures, objects and architectures. She would use the space to produce a series of paintings using wood stain, veneer and oils, paying particular attention to the work of Richard Artschwager, and considering his approach to the everyday object. Looking closely at furniture in working class conditions such as her own, and modern furniture in luxury conditions, she wants to explore the sense of disillusionment that she associates with the definition of ‘home’, and create artworks that reflect this.

Nick Jordan and Amber Henry of Mason & Fifth, alongside Hypha Studios trustees

Mason & Fifth is a community living project who have offered fully furnished flats and studio spaces to eight artists for two months at their site in Primrose Hill. They partnered with Hypha Studios for the selection process. The live-in residencies are offered in exchange for donating a work made during the two months to Mason & Fifth, who will display the work in one of their future buildings and in an exhibition in early 2023.