D8 Artist Spotlight - Camilla Hanney

I am an Irish artist originally from Dublin 8, currently living and working in London. My practice spans ceramics, sculpture, and installation, with clay at the centre of my work.

The kind of art I love making is work that sits between attraction and discomfort. I’m interested in objects that are seductive, humorous, slightly unsettling, and emotionally charged. A lot of my work explores the body, appetite, femininity, ritual, and the hidden stories contained in everyday objects. I love making pieces that invite people in visually and then reveal something deeper or stranger the longer you look.

You grew up in Ireland (Dublin 8 specifically), studied in Dún Laoghaire, then did your MFA in London at Goldsmiths. How has that journey shaped your approach to art, and your perspective on home?

Growing up in Dublin 8 provided me with a strong sense of place very early on. It's an area layered with history, creativity, comedy and community. You absorb that spirit without even realising it. There’s something very direct and resourceful about the area that I think still lives in my work.

Studying in Dún Laoghaire gave me my foundations as an artist and introduced me to thinking critically about making. Then moving to London and studying at Goldsmiths expanded everything. It challenged me conceptually and gave me the confidence to push scale, materiality, and ideas further.

Being away from Ireland also changed how I think about home. Distance can sharpen your relationship to where you’re from. Home becomes memory, language, smells, architecture, humour. That distance has made me more curious and more appreciative.

Your work explores the body, identity, and femininity through ceramics and sculpture. What first drew you to those themes, and what keeps you returning to them?

I choose to explore the body through my practice because it’s a symbol that can be understood universally.. Everyone who inhabits flesh can understand the pain and pleasure of being a body and at certain times feeling out of control of their bodies and emotions.

My work tends to focus on the female body and its representation because it’s the framework that I inhabit. But I’m also very interested in the malleability of the body and it’s social constructions, the fluidity of gender and the destruction of former representations of women that have been portrayed through art, myth and religion.

Ceramics felt like the perfect material to explore these themes because it’s both bodily and symbolic. It can be soft, fragile, messy, resilient, sensual. Clay records touch. It remembers pressure. That relationship between body and material felt very immediate to me.

You often take traditional craft materials like porcelain and give them a fresh, playful twist. Where does that idea come from for you?

I’m fascinated by the ways in which materials come with inherited meanings. Porcelain, for example, often suggests perfection, etiquette, wealth, ornament, fragility. I’m interested in disrupting those expectations.

I tend to subvert quite traditional, genteel crafts in my work and I do this as an attempt to transgress and also contemplate conventional modes of femininity. I often use materials with ‘quaint’ or ‘genteel’ connotations to depict something unruly, bodily, humorous, or grotesque. It asks viewers to reconsider what craft materials are allowed to say.

You're currently here in Dublin for your Spring 2026 residency at Throwingshapes in The Liberties. What has it been like returning to work in this area, both personally and creatively?

It’s been nostalgic and meaningful. There’s something very sensory about returning to make work in the area where you grew up. Streets, sounds, buildings and even the scent of the Guinness hops can trigger memories in an instant.

Creatively, it’s been energising. Being based in The Liberties means the research is alive around me. I’m not reading history from a distance - I’m walking through it every day, hearing local voices, noticing changes, seeing what remains and what’s disappearing. That immediacy has shaped the work enormously.

Your new work is called A Libertine Feast, described as a “love letter to The Liberties.” Can you paint a picture for us, what can audiences expect from this ceramic banquet?

They can expect a banquet table of sorts - lavish, theatrical, playful, slightly strange. There will be porcelain platters, small vessels, decorative forms, figurative elements, food references, and symbolic objects that speak to the history of The Liberties.

I want it to feel abundant - like a feast where stories, labour, appetite, memory, and humour are all being served at once. It’s a celebration, but it also asks what communities carry, what they lose, and what they continue to nourish.

You’ve spoken about ceramics as a way of holding memory, almost like an archive of actions and traces. How does this installation capture the stories, labour, and spirit of the Liberties?

Clay is an incredible material because it records touch. Every pinch, join, fingerprint, repair, and gesture can remain. That physical memory feels important when speaking about labour and lived experience.

The Liberties has always been shaped by makers. I wanted the installation to hold that energy through hand-built forms, repeated actions, and objects linked to nourishment and craft.

There are references to factory workers, brewing, domestic work, trade, and collective gathering. Rather than making a literal historical display, I’m creating an emotional archive - something that captures the texture and spirit of the area through material and form.

Dublin 8 has such a unique mix of history, creativity, and community vibe.How important has engaging with the local community, conversations, stories, lived experience, been in shaping this work?

Conversations with people who have connections or memories tied to the area have been incredibly useful. Sometimes it’s not grand facts - it’s small memories, symbols or sayings that have contributed to the project in an unexpected way. Those details are often the richest material.

I wanted the work to feel responsive rather than imposed. Observing and listening have been as important as making.

At the end of the residency you’ll present the full “A Libertine Feast” as a solo installation. What feeling do you want people to walk away with?

I feel working with ceramics can provide a deliberate fusion of high art and low art, providing entry points through a material that is often mass produced or functional but presenting it in an unfamiliar context, evoking new reactions and feelings towards it.

I hope the installation will provide an accessible, universal dialect that draws on our emotions and encourages a response or experience from every viewer, not just those who view it through a trained eye. I firmly believe that art is for all. I hope viewers will leave with an excitement for ceramics and a curiosity to learn more about the liberties and its surrounding D8 neighbourhood.

Quickfire Round:

Favourite spot or memory from Dublin 8?
I always take a trip to walk along the canal in Portobello and admire the swans whenever I’m home.

One word for your work right now?
playful

Something (book, artist, place) that's inspiring you these days?
The Liberties!

Exhibition A Libertine Feast by Camilla Hanney takes place from 4th - 9th May as part of Culture Date with Dublin 8.
Exhibition Opening Monday 4th May at 6pm, Tailor's Hall.

Camilla Hanney
A Libertine Feast
4th May - 9th May 2026
At Tailors Hall Back Lane