Katie McCloskey’s practice centres on painting as a means of preserving and extending moments of togetherness rooted in Drogheda’s social life. Drawing from everyday gatherings, pub conversations, gigs, and collective acts of making, her work attends to gestures of care, intimacy, and connection. Using camcorder and iPhone footage as a starting point, McCloskey translates fleeting interactions into layered oil paintings that slow time, allowing figures to blur, overlap, and merge as memories and experiences accumulate.
Posters collected from the local venue McHugh’s, alongside zines sourced from the Underground Zine Archive established by Rita Hynes, form an evolving archive that informs and contextualises the work. Influenced by Drogheda’s punk and DIY culture, the paintings operate both as documents of community and as active participants within it, preserving its emotional texture while contributing to its ongoing life.
The work emerges at a moment when the creative spaces that nurture such communities are becoming increasingly scarce across Ireland. Despite the country’s wealth of creative talent, many of the venues and infrastructures that sustain artistic practice continue to disappear, with the loss of The Complex marking a particularly significant blow for emerging artists. At the same time, the rapid rise of AI-generated imagery and automated creative tools is reshaping cultural production, increasingly displacing opportunities for artists and creative workers. In this context, McCloskey’s paintings become both a reflection on and an argument for protecting the physical, communal spaces in which art, culture, and collective life are produced through lived experience, collaboration, and human connection. The work asserts the continued importance of artist-led communities and cultural infrastructures, especially in towns and regional communities where such spaces are often most vulnerable.
Drogheda Nights - Video Piece