Niamh Rooney

Niamh Rooney is an interdisciplinary artist working with performance, sound, and installation: exploring the themes surrounding sentimentality - more recently looking at how trauma impacts mental health and coping mechanisms. She layers mediums to create multi-faceted, palimpsest works: often combining performance to create a reciprocal artwork. Having reached a point where she has moved on, Rooney’s performance creates a platform to talk about her past childhood trauma and experience of sexual abuse in a school environment. This opens discussion on how mental health can affect us later in life unexpectedly, and places the audience in the position of the artist. Finding solace in music and private space, she pokes fun at high/low culture by performing melodic compositions on her cello in contrasting spaces (toilets, corridors, empty bedrooms). Now forced to stay inside due to the Covid-19 pandemic, she explores the relationship she now finds herself in, opening windows in hope that the public realm can hear her private melodies