CONSTALLATIONS - a play on the words Constellations, Consolation and Stall, is a series of work created from Sept 2021 to Oct 2023 and exhibited in the Hyde Bridge Gallery in Nov of 2023.

Based around a series of 25 experimental drawings inspired by Spencer Finches 'Bee Drawings', the pieces were created by staring at the night sky, noting down positions, losing place, then noting down again to create new constellations that were wholly imaginary.

The series of pieces that followed were either direct adaptions or reactions to these drawings exploring notions of grief, the idea of staring into space, the immersive long takes of director Andrei Tarkovsky and the dual meaning of the phrase “Nothing is Easy to Fill.”

CONSTALLATION (Video) – is a Music and Video piece created by composer Owen Kilfeather in collaboration with the artist, reacting to the 25 drawings which was funded by The Arts Council of Irelands' Agility Awards in 2022.

“Starscape Miniatures is a collection of twenty-five vignettes composed in response to a series of night-sky portraits by Rebecca Massey. Each portrait was mapped out with the artist according to light, texture, density and form, which were then transposed into musical analogues using an array of compositional techniques from traditional to abstract and scored for electric guitars, synthesizers and samples.” September 2022-January 2023 - Owen Kilfeather

Reacting then in turn to the composed piece 'Starscape Miniatures', the original Constallation drawings were used as a starting point to create visual sound vibrations from each of the 25 Starscape music pieces. The already imaginary Constallation patterns react and slowly dissolve, distorting in accordance with the frequencies of each piece, the patterns disappearing into oblivion or creating new patterns again.

Initially conceived as an exploration of the notion of knowing oneself and the sometimes painful process that involves, this triptych of pieces evolved in the making. Grown from a study of broken and cracked eggs, shells and skin started before the outbreak of COVID 19, the pieces became more focused during the making on ideas of isolation and entrapment within ones own head and space, but also of the endless creative space and imaginative freedoms waiting to be discovered within if one is only willing to ‘crack open’ and explore.

Exhibited as part of 3 Rooms Exhibition The Hyde Bridge Gallery, Sligo in 2022

In Deconstructing Selfism or Explosion of the Artist upon Contemplating the Possibility of Being a Floating Consciousness inside a Bag of Meat , feelings of apprehension, clarity, introspection, boredom and humour that can occur when sitting in hospital waiting rooms and the sometimes uplifting conversations with strangers and thoughts that can occur there are playfully explored. The tangle of hair and pills against the expanded space-like black hole where the head once was tries to suggest that maybe whatever thinks inside the brain is in fact ‘bigger on the inside’. The pills, dirt and cancerous growths twisting around the jigsaw piece limbs of Deconstructing Selfism Part 2 , echo visceral notions of the body as adjustable pieces of blood and bone.

Exhibited in It’s All in Your Head in Hyde Bridge Gallery in 2018 & Cairde Festival Artist Trail in 2023

Blanket is a collection of digital images exploring the tactile nature of memory and comfort evoked through the exploration of a beloved blanket. Objects can hold very significant importance when it comes to evoking the past, especially those that have been crafted by hand in youth or by a lost loved one.

The colourful magnified lines of loops and hooks created by the artists grandmothers hands are re-imagined onto the screen. The exhibitions aimed to encourage the viewer to consider the making of crafted objects as that of memory making, and to consider the tactile power of those objects in recalling happy memories of the past, and the comfort there in.

Originally conceived for a gallery setting, due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 Pandemic, the Blanket series was released as an online exhibition in early April 2020.

Sleep Bomb and Neon Dream explore the emotions and side effects experienced by the artist during recovery from a concussion based illness. Using the familiar images of beds, pillows, brain scans and bomb craters, Sleep Bomb imagines the artists feelings of destruction and isolation after the initial illness took place. Its sister piece, Neon Dream, echoes the same imagery and was inspired by a week of intensely technicolour dreams had in recovery.

A Sort of Letting GO, initially inspired by the work of Hilma A F Klint and the watercolour drawings of Georgia O’Keefe, were a series of uninhibited and unplanned drawings were created over the space of two years after walks in a variety of natural environments and cityscapes. Created as a way to escape my usual leaning towards narrative, a new approach of subconsciously thinking on to a page with no initial design or pre-thought was explored, the various shapes were drawn and contemplated slowly, adding and subtracting by intuition. Words and suggestions from what was seen and heard filtered into the drawings forming open ended narratives and titles.

Most people at some point have encountered someone who ‘just doesn’t feel right.’ Through the form of the stalking Shadowman the emotions and fears felt receiving unwanted attention from such an individual were explored. The Shadowman (Portrait) sought to depict the Shadowman as a character of featureless fear that blends into his dark surroundings with only his unblinking eyes warning the viewer that he is ever watchful.

Someone’s Watching Part 1, 2 & 3 tried to communicate the slow and gradual change that occurs when normal everyday encounters with a passing stranger can turn quickly into unsettling meetings with a threatening aggressor. The piece documents the slow and subtle build up that can occur when on the receiving end of someone else’s mental illness.

It Adds Up to This was a visible record. Every sighting of the Shadowman was represented by an individual letter that by itself may have seemed harmless but together added up to something quite terrifying. The grains of salt symbolised a period of time passing as in an hour glass as the frequency of the Shadowman sightings increased.

Run, Stop, Don’t Cross and Jumping At Shadows documented the aftermath of encountering the Shadowman. Whilst absent from the images his memory can be seen hiding behind everyday things.

It’s All In Your Head was created during the recovery period of a concussion based illness. The drawings were an attempt to express the overwhelming weight of sleep as both a friend and an enemy. As large portions of the day had to be spent sleeping to aid the brain in healing itself, sleep became a necessary monster that whilst taking over the majority of time became the main aid in the recovery of full cognitive abilities. The sleeping monster embracing the prostrate body in the images can be viewed as both a beast of recovery and inescapable and frustrating monster stealing time. Given the nature of the illness Heed No Nightly Noises, You Have To Try, And When You Wake and Patience were created during the intervals of wakefulness over a six month period.

It’s All In Your Head is a response post-recovery to the drawings made during the illness, contemplating the process of recovery through the act of drawing.

TRY TRY AGAIN (2008) was an installation piece featured in the ‘This Rather Than…’ group exhibition curated by Russell Harte of graduates from around Ireland held in the Galway Arts Centre.

The installation explored the notion of human flight. Still motion images and photographs of winged, mid-jump, falling and crashing people were manipulated and transferred onto painted polyester film. The altered images were then transferred onto handmade rice paper kites. The kites were hung strategically from the ceiling of the gallery under directed spotlights which created shadows and turned the kites gently (due to their heat) as the viewer walked or lay under them.

PUBLIC INSTALLATIONS

GROWTH - Cairde Artist Trail (2023)

Window installation in Lyons Cafe as part of Cairde Festival Artist Trail in 2023. Deconstructing Selfism or Explosion of the Artist upon Contemplating the Possibility of Being a Floating Consciousness inside a Bag of Meat & Deconstructing Selfism Part 2 .

POP-UP Shakespeare: IFI CHILDRENS FILM FESTIVAL (2016)

The POP-UP Shakespeare Cinema was a public installation created in conjunction with the British Council’s Shakespeare Lives Program celebrating Shakespeare’s work on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of his death at the IFI Family Film Festival in 2016. A cardboard cinema was constructed out of waste posters and displays from the Irish Film Institute. Artist Don Conroy hosted a Shakespeare Drawing workshop outside the space inviting the children participating in the workshop to draw on the cinema afterwards.

DONT FU*K WITH THE DUCK (2009)

The P.P.D.I (Presentation for the Preservation of Duck-feeding Ireland) ‘Don’t Fu*k With The Duck’ was a public installation piece invented for an Art Crawl organized in association with SLAM/ArtMart Gallery Sligo for Culture Night 2009. The P.P.D.I was an imaginary society set up to involve the public getting them to interact and contribute to the piece. Complimentary ‘Duck Feeding Bags’ were designed and placed in various locations beside the Garavougue River throughout Sligo Town during the day.

WORKSHOPS

Since 2016 Rebecca has worked in a variety of Arts and Education settings, creating and facilitating workshops predominantly with primary school aged children in a variety of hands-on art based projects and events in both Sligo, Leitrim, Cavan and Dublin. Since 2021 she has worked in collaboration with Sligo Education centre to provide BLAST and TAP artist residencies in Schools, and has recently expanded to working with both young adult, adult and teacher workshops, most notably during the Yeats Society's Summer School. Rebecca is happy and open to working with curators, galleries and arts organisations to create workshops that engage with the public at large and can be adapted to a diverse range of events and exhibitions.