Jennifer Rylands

In this body of work Rylands reflects on death, a personal process of grief and the universal questions around what remains in the dissolution and transformation of the physical.

Informed by poiesis –‘that which leads a thing into being’ - and James Hillman’s alchemical psychology, she considers these questions through the lens of ritual and alchemy.

Working directly with the totemic empty chair, the element of fire, video projection, and the materiality of paint, she interrogates the place of death in contemporary western society, which is characterised by the inherent speed of neoliberal economic structures. She argues for a reclamation of the slow honouring of cyclical processes of death, rebirth and renewal.

Jennifer Rylands is a visual artist based in Dublin, currently completing the MFA. Her work inquires into the poetics of living, impermanence, thresholds, transformations. She works across painting, sculpture, installation, video and projection.