Laoise FitzGerald
she/her
Wish You Were Here x
An Irish understanding of home has long been bound to exile. This work lingers in the gap between staying and leaving. As we sit in the absence of those who go, the fabric of our home is redefined.
Textiles evoke closeness and domesticity, while scale is used to reflect how emigration looms large within the Irish psyche. Animation brings memory into motion, illustrating the evolving connections to those who shape our sense of home through adolescence and early adulthood.
This project is both personal and collective—rooted in lived experience, shaped by a generation displaced by housing precarity and pulled overseas in search of opportunity. Despite its themes of absence and loss, the work maintains a sense of joy and optimism, using playfulness and colour to express a childlike nostalgia and persistent longing. In reflecting on what is lost, it gestures toward what might yet return—or be reimagined.
Comfort in the face of Absence: Billy (no-mates) imaginary friend soft sculpture figure
Comfort in the face of Absence: Billy (no-mates) imaginary friend soft sculpture figure
Comfort in the face of Absence: Billy (no-mates) imaginary friend soft sculpture figure
Comfort in the face of Absence: Billy (no-mates) imaginary friend soft sculpture figure
Comfort in the face of Absence: Billy (no-mates) imaginary friend soft sculpture figure
Comfort in the face of Absence: Billy (no-mates) imaginary friend soft sculpture figure
Wish You Were Here x, textile banner series
I Miss You on the DART, textile banner
The Lonely Pub, textile banner
Wish You Were Here x, banner close-ups