Mary Furlong
Biography.
Mary Furlong is a graduate of the Limerick School of Art & Design, the Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology, the Technological University Dublin, and Ulster University, and a professional member of Visual Artists Ireland.
Her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows, won the Solstice Visual Arts Award, and is in the collections of the Irish Queer Archive and Rua Red.
In 2019 Mary returned to full-time education after a twenty-four-year break to undertake the TUD BA project ‘Not the location of my first kiss’ which was featured in a six-page editorial in the Summer 2022 issue of The Irish Arts Review.
Since returning to university Mary’s practice has become highly autobiographical. Drawing from personal experiences, the research and making of the work allows her to process, understand, and communicate those experiences.
Photography forms the main part of Mary’s practice and in recent years has evolved to incorporate text and video. Working close to home she is inspired by what she finds around her, everyday objects, stories, and chance remarks. Mary is interested in the uncanny, memorializing, memory, misremembering, personal histories, local places, and their hidden histories, the commonplace, and the generally overlooked.
The Red Ribbon Project
If a child, a girl, is delicate, you cut her hair to give her back her strength, to help her thrive, because her hair is taking all her strength.
The Red Ribbon Project
If the head falls off a holy statue your prayers have been answered. They say if the head falls off never glue it back.
The Red Ribbon Project
If someone hits you with an elder stick you’ve to break it in three pieces, if not you’ll get a hump in your back.
The Red Ribbon Project
When a tooth falls out you throw it over your shoulder and depending
on where it lands, to the left or to the right, your new tooth will grow straight or crooked!
The Red Ribbon Project
Salt is lucky outside the door, it keeps evil away, it’s holy.
The Red Ribbon Project
A Fairy tree is one tree on top of a hill in the middle of a field with no other trees to be seen around it, that’s a Fairy tree and you’re not to go near it.
The Red Ribbon Project
Do you know what I often did I often did it myself like ya know you often hear years ago you know the apple the little what ya call it the twig yeah that just goes ABCDEF you know what I mean the initials I often heard that you years ago honest to God yeah and then you say you go round you go round the little cordl thing say ABC and it starts to stop at C well then you go on and you get the apple an you dig in and you go ABCD they say it gives you the initials of the man you’re going to marry. Honest to God that’s the truth yeah.