Catriona Osborne
There is a polarisation within the Catholic Church’s teachings. Divine and sin. Devotion and hostility. These poles are harmful and restraining as they leave no room for coalescence. This is reflected by depicting inside and outside, drawing on the same simple image. When used repetitively, images take on new forms to investigate the interaction of the conscious and sub-conscious. The images explored are Catholic architectural features, simplified to their most basic form. These canopy windows are used to honour saints pictured in stained glass, what does it mean if these windows are left hollow?
“Let us observe that this nightmare is not visually frightening. The fear does not come from the outside nor is it composed of old memories it has no past, no physiology.”
-Poetics of Space Gaston Bachelard
Catriona Osborne is a Limerick-based visual artist working primarily in film-based and camera-less photography. Deeply rooted in process, play and sentiment, her practice spans a constellation of analogue techniques, including pinhole photography, scanography, lumen printing, cyanotype, photograms, double exposure and darkroom manipulation - often folding into mixed-media forms such as collage, sewing, writing and video. Across all mediums, Osborne is driven by a need to make: not for acclaim or outcome, but as a way of sustaining wellbeing, curiosity and connection.
Through a prism of touch, memory and trial, Catriona Osborne crafts images that are neither fixed nor didactic. Instead, her works drift and gently hold space for feeling, reflection and return. The darkroom, for her, is not just a technical site but a companion, alive with the presence of every photograph that came before. “I feel like every book I’ve ever read has been read to me by the person who wrote it,” she says. “And I feel the same way in the darkroom. I’m following a tradition.”
In a world of digital saturation and constant output, Osborne’s work offers something slower and more vital: a practice built on care, chance, repetition, and feeling. To engage with her art is to be reminded that expression doesn’t need polish and that fragility can be a form of strength - not despite its imperfection, but because of it.