Caddy Munnelly

'Dune Dwellers' is a multimedia stop-motion animation film that blends colouring pencils, oil paint, paper, charcoal, cardboard and acrylic to construct two worlds suspended between childlike imagination and absurdist abstraction. 

The film resists easy definition. It is a fairytale and a fever dream. It is for children. It is not for children. It is for adults. It is not for adults. It is colourful and dark, playful and deeply unnerving, its essence feels like a bedtime story that curdles into something sinister. 

My practice is drawn to the boundary between playfulness and uncanniness through visual media. In Dune Dwellers, I explore how materials themselves shape the perception of place and feeling. Primary shapes and colours evoke the tactile familiarity of childhood and early learning, yet through abstraction and sound, that familiarity fractures, giving way to anxiety, disorientation, and dread.

The animation is accompanied by an installation designed to draw the viewer physically into its world, extending the boundaries of the screen and deepening the sense of immersion before the uncanny takes hold.

My name is Caddy Munnelly, I am a Dublin-based multidisciplinary artist working across visual media, painting, and sculpture. My practice explores the tension between playfulness and uncanniness, using world-building and storytelling to create immersive, often disorienting experiences.

I am interested in pushing the boundaries of audience expectation, constructing works that balance contradiction, light and dark, satire and absurdity, wonder and unease. These opposing forces allow me to explore how meaning shifts within unstable or ambiguous environments.

My influences include the surreal, tactile worlds of Jan Švankmajer, the critical reflections on the Anthropocene by Hito Steyerl, and the experimental irrationality of the Dada movement, particularly in the work of Hans Richter.