Upcoming
I am excited to announce that I am currently working towards a solo exhibition in the Ballinglen Art Gallery in Ballycastle, County Mayo, early next year. Themes of interconnection and healing through ritual are being investigated.
Past
The MA in Creative Practice showcase was held in ATU Sligo, in September 2025.
Rud A Thugann An tUisce Dom / What The Water Gives Me
The element of water guides me through a holistic and animistic exploration, seeking to evoke transformative, collective, healing. A lifelong magpie mind, paired with a wish to see beauty in the discarded and marginalised has delivered me to a multidisciplinary practice that embodies a boundless investigation of interconnectedness. Through ritual, the body, and engagement with both the natural world and the human-made environment, I seek to reawaken awareness of our deep bonds with all other organisms, fostering moments of reflection and participation.
By combining visual, live, and sound art, I create an immersive experience that aims to connect viewers to ancient and contemporary practices of collective meaning-making. Water permeates, both as a metaphor and a tangible element in my work, representing fluidity, transformation, and ecological ties. By tentatively reimagining, dismantling and layering repurposed and scavenged materials, I stitch connections to the past, present and future. My creativity and imagination are informed both by my background on a windswept Swedish island in the middle of the Baltic Sea and my current home in the West of Ireland.
The fishing floats have been collected through years of cleaning plastic debris from beaches, both in Sweden and Ireland. Thrifted threads and yarns have been knotted, building interlinked filaments in a slow ritual, each knot a wish and a prayer for a more connected world.
2025
Elemental Energy – Maria May – Eorna – The Model – Sligo – Photography Cían Flynn – 2025
(Eorna was a performance art event curated by Sandra Corrigan Breathnach as part of her artists residency within The Model, Sligo, situated within the artist residency programme, curated by Christine Mackey as part of her solo exhibition Seeking to walk beautifully on the earth, funded through the Arts Council of Ireland’s Project Award – Awarded to Christine Mackey.)
2024
The BA(hons) in Fine Art degree showcase was held in ATU Sligo in May 2024
For You
May’s practice investigates the interdependence existing between humans, the natural world and all the myriad of lifeforms within it. In our troubled times her artworks aim to be a counterbalance, a refuge, and a sanctuary, where hopes and wishes can form and eventually help transform our reality. Recycled plastic is manipulated by heating, folding, cutting, and stitching into organic forms. This process highlights the beauty, which can be found unexpectedly, in the mundane and discarded. Natural light is celebrated, and technological aspects are deliberately kept to a minimum. Contemporary artworks by artists Emma Talbot and Celina Muldoon, who in their practices make similar enquires, functions as important catalysts for the creative process. Collective and personal grief, and how to mend our shared broken history, are recurring themes in May’s practice.
In the immersive sculptural installation For You, the viewer’s body becomes an important relational part. By altering something as unattractive as plastic packaging, the artwork asks us in turn to shift our perceptions and tap into the healing powers of imagination. Historical illustrations and stained-glass windows by Harry Clarke have been explored and reimagined in a three-dimensional space to fit within a contemporary Fine Art context. Sacred geometry and everything rooted and unrooted in nature are ever-present sources of inspiration. May grew up on a windswept Swedish Island in the middle of the Baltic Sea, feeling a strong connection to the land and the elements from an early age. After moving to Ireland in 2004, this enthusiasm grew into a strong affinity for all of nature. It allowed various interests to merge, grow, and expand into a broad art practice, spanning drawing, sculpture, collage, and installation. Animism, folklore, and Indigenous land-based knowledge are fields investigated, processed, and diversely portrayed.
2023
The BA in Fine Art degree showcase was held in ATU Sligo.
The theme of my work was interconnection, and the main materials used were recycled plastic for the sculptures and recycled papers for the large layered and carved collages.
Maria May 