Emer MacDermott was born in Galway where she now lives as a single Mother with her two teenagers. She took the brave decision to start a college degree in Contemporary Art at the age of 49 and is now looking forward to her degree show on 1st June 2019 in GMIT.  Her art practice is mainly about social issues and how information is used as a social commodity to benefit powerful groups. The process is very important to her art practice and she tends to involve other artists and groups from the community to produce work. MacDermottt researches her subject matter thoroughly, using interviews, historical references and other material to ensure an authentic integrity runs through her artwork.

 

‘State Eireann’

This is an installation that combines large colourful  portraits of young people with messages relating to the past and present. MacDermott uses ink on paper, textiles and book art to bring together her commentary on our past, present and future. Her work is inspired by the countless witness statements from survivors of Irish Industrial Schools, that describe a state that incarcerated children in brutal prisons and enabled the kidnapping, trafficking, and torture of babies, children and young adults.

 

Her work also looks back at the legacy of the land league, who fought and won for a fairer distribution of land. Critically how that ideology was forgotten as soon as the new state was established. The ‘land grabbers’ were demonized by William O’ Brien of the United Irish League, who called for “unity organisation agitation”, to force compulsory purchase of land for the benefit of poor tenant farmers. This is in contrast to the ‘land grabbers’ today, who are free to set up funds, enjoy healthy profits supported by tax breaks, even if that means evictions and exclusion from housing for local people.

 

‘Classroom’

This work is an exploration of the  industrial memories project by UCD, a project that seeks to clarify the details within the Ryan report into allegations of abuse in Industrial schools.  MacDermott worked with groups of children to visually represent the information from the industrial memories project. The work is a series of sculptures, drawing and paintings on board, that show the scale of the Industrial school network. The work also addresses the misrepresentation of history through omission and seeks to address this by involving children in the process of making art about past atrocities on children like themselves.. She also questions the politicalization of information through the curriculum taught in Irish Schools.