Djuna O’Neill’s work holds the question of our own materiality somewhere near its centre, exploring the feeling of our bodies in contact with the world. Through touch we ground ourselves in the world, assure ourselves that we exist. A stone feels hard because our hand is soft, as we hold it we feel it press against our skin.
A disconnect exists in today’s material culture; a disregard for the innate value of materials which has arisen out of abundance, out of the Capitalist commodification of material in which the labour processes which give it its value are effaced. Perhaps through reinstating a reverence of material certain crises which the world faces could be combatted: to place emphasis once more on intuitive and somatic experience. Through her work, the artist explores a narrative for future material use in which a reverence for material is reinstigated, a reconsideration of the networks of people, landscape and material.
