Sophie Gough is an artist and researcher that lives and works in West Cork, along the south-westerly coast of Ireland.
Like a flicker of sunlight or the trembling of a shadow, identity moves. To fully know oneself, takes work. It’s a precarious practice…
Sophie Gough’s work is concerned with exploring notions of shifting identities. We are stratified beings, characters through time. Through extensive material research, she examines the character of a material memory embedded within the objects she collects from sites that hold a particular resonance for her.
Working mostly with native or locally sourced objects and materials, she collaborates with the agency of her surrounding environment. Within these spaces, she uncovers vital qualities through taking care of these objects, exposing their materiality and breathing new life into their memories.
Her encounters through making art, centre around the belief in a knowledge of place forms the basis of self knowledge and without that, we finder it harder to grasp our own position in the world around us.