'Holding memory in clay is central to my practice.'

 

Holly Mullarkey's background is in primary school teaching. Her interest in art influenced her teaching practices, resulting in a major exhibition with Babóró Children's Arts Festival 2004. Holly also facilitated the delivery of the Irish Visual Arts Curriculum to teachers nationally following the 2001 updating of the national curriculum. Alongside this she delivered art courses to primary school teachers in the Galway Education Centre and Hibernia College.

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Holly completed a degree in ceramics in GMIT in 2011 for which she recieved the Student of the Year Award. Her interest in ceramic art is inspired by the teachings of Carl Jung. Her artistic philosophy is that memory held in the unconscious can be awakened and made manifest through clay.

 

A number of her recent exhibitions have explored grief through artistic connection with survivors of the Tuam Mother and Baby home. She made porcelain baby shoes for the 2016 Commemoration of Tuam Baby Burials. With Clay Galway she exhibited porcelain bones 'Tumulus' ('burial mound') in 2019.

For the European Capital Of Culture 2020 Clay Galway online she exhibited 'Deora Dé,' a poem and video installation about the outcast mother using Tear Coracles with ceramic artist Emma O Toole. For Galway Clay 2021 online she exhibited gypsum orbs holding porcelain bones.

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Holly's work also includes film installation.

2020,'Deora Dé,' a poem and video installation about the outcast mother using Tear Coracles with ceramic artist Emma O Toole for European Capital Of Culture Clay Galway online exhibition. 

2016 'He'll never be welcome here,' was her Eye Cinema GRETB film installation with Roisín Ní Fhaoláin, about pregnancy and rejection. 

2015 'Offering', involved clay performance video installation about WWI grief.

2014 Producer for 'Changing Tides,' Award winning Ishka Films Documentary about Inish Turk Island,

2014 Artist and Artistic Director for 'Woman and her Symbols,' Ishka Films, in which work by the artist was interpreted by Jungian analyst, Dr. Mairín Ní Nualláin.

2011 Writer and director 'The Long Road,' Ishka Films Video installation, GMIT, Galway .

2010 'Inish Dibirt,' Writer and Artistic Director, Ishka Films.

2010 'Broken Vessel,' Exploratory Video of spilling and breaking, outpouring grief.