Nicola McClean
she/her
Domestic Disturbance
Two bronze sculptures, a gun and a phone, rest on a mid-century drinks trolley. Both are toxic. Both shoot: one violently, the other insidiously. Set within a staged domestic interior, they are surrounded by vintage furnishings, soft textiles, and paintings drawn from 8mm family film.
The work reflects the dissonance between my analogue 1970s childhood and the digital world in which I now raise five children. What once felt tactile and imaginative has become filtered and performative, shaped by screens that deliver violence, distraction, and commodification into the everyday.
Beneath the trolley lies an embroidered rug, its stitched text layered over a design that echoes a target motif. This domestic softness becomes a site of quiet exposure, revealing how consumer culture seeps into the home and subtly shapes its inhabitants, especially children.
Shifting between sculpture and memory, the personal and the political, this installation asks how power enters unnoticed, disguised by routine and softened by design.
Volition and Relay, sculptural works cast in bronze and embedded with lead, NCAD Works 2025 exhibition, 'Domestic Disturbance' installation view.
Crawl Space triptych, oil and graphite on cradled board with embedded lead and bullet casings, three panels, each 30 × 30cm