Jane Cummins

Jane Cummins (b.1984) is a Dublin-based visual artist. She is a graduate of the MFA Photography programme at Belfast School of Art, Ulster University. Cummins's photographs deal with the human figure and the landscape. Her work is autobiographical, using self-portraiture in her search for the self, aiding her acceptance of that self. She creates a dialogue between the figure and its surrounding landscape as she aims to find clarity and confront thoughts and experiences, which contribute to her identity. Recipient of the Belfast Exposed Graduate Award, she has been published internationally. Her work is part of several collections, the Office of Public Works State Art Collection, and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland Collection. In 2019 Jane co-founded Studio ID-11 based in Dublin's Marlay Park, an art space where she facilitates analog and alternative processing workshops.

Solo Exhibitions: 2017 Half Sick of Shadows, Belfast Exposed Gallery, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 2017 Marrow, The Library Project, Dublin, Ireland. 2017 Marrow, Belfast Exposed Gallery, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Group Exhibitions: 2022 Opening the Gates PhotoIreland Festival, The Printworks, Dublin, Ireland. 2021 191TH RHA Annual Exhibition, Dublin, Ireland. 2020 Highlanes Open Submission, Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda, Ireland.

Project Title: Half Sick of Shadows

This series attempts to represent my overwhelmingly claustrophobic feelings towards living in the family home as a thirty-something and its effects on the search for one's identity. With a staggering number of people in their thirties and forties forced into the same situation, the feeling of inadequacy fails to relent. 

The revelation of identity through repeated views on the body evokes an idea that human knowledge and experience are built-up over a period of time in the search for self-hood. The self is always present but impossible to pin down, so through the process of creating and viewing these depictions of me, they work as a remedy to my frustrations and enable me to negotiate an identity for myself.

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