rThe project ‘Anthropomorphic, Mammalia and the Hominidae’ is a collaboration between two Westmeath visual artists Mel French and Celine Sheridan. It started in spring 2019 when they both realised their visual arts practices have very similar themes and research interests. Both of their practices reflect on and engage with the psychological and physical aspects (psychosomatic) of both the human and animal condition - investigating humans, animals and also the similarities, comparisons and contradictions between humans and animals. They both felt that there was huge potential in collaborating on a project, combining and sharing their knowledge and experience and collaboratively engaging with academic research resulting in new bodies of artwork.

This instigated a more focused plan about how the project would materialise, who they would meet, what they hoped to achieve, where they hoped to exhibit, social engagement, ambitions, pitfalls, and also how they would evaluate and progress.

Hope to achieve:

They are individually creating new art work to present in a series of two person exhibitions. The first of these exhibitions is a site specific exhibition in the Trinity College Dublin Zoology Museum in summer 2021 which is also one of the settings from which their research is drawn.

The second is an exhibition in Limerick City Gallery in 2022 (dates to be confirmed) offered to them by Una McCarthy, Director of LCG, who was highly supportive of the project

Please note that the details of events listed above are provided by the relevant Local Authorities.