Jaki Irvine

Jaki Irvine writes, composes and creates video installations in which image and musical score overlap, coalesce and diverge. Contested histories, sonic bricolage, the built environment, and the peripheral or undervalued have all found their way into Jaki Irvine’s deep-reaching, polyphonic works. Her attention is often turned to the peripheral or the undervalued: recentring stories or figures written out of history, songs that filter through a city's streets, overheard conversations, the flap of a hummingbird's wings. She works on solo projects and in collaboration with other artists and musicians, moving between overt musicality and the edges where a sound begins or ends. Jaki Irvine makes space for strangeness, blurring the boundary between the real and the imagined, the familiar and unknowable. She focuses on the rigours and pleasures of looking with a listening eye.

Her works frequently involve different iterations, conceived and presented as single or more complex multi channel sound/video installations and as live events, often with video and with live musicians.

Re_sett_ings (2022-23), commissioned as a project by Mark O’Gorman for the Complex Gallery was developed in collaboration with Locky Morris. Initially installed as 12 inter-related sound/video works, it was further developed with an additional 7 videos and an off-site digital billboard, for the Void Gallery, Derry. This was then re-configured and performed for Music Currents 2023, with live vj-ing and chamber ensemble, including Joe O’Farrell (flute), Izumi Kimura (piano), Sarah Grimes (drums), Cora Venus Lunny (violin) and Ilse de Ziah(cello). Ack Ro (2019-2020) performed as a live event at NCAD Gallery, Dublin, with Louise Phelan (vocals), Joe O’Farrell (flute), Izumi Kimura (piano), Sarah Grimes (drums), was also conceived as a multi-channel installation with neon in Kerlin Gallery, Dublin and Frith Street Gallery, London. If The Ground Should Open (2016), commissioned as a multi-channel video and sound installation for IMMA, was also presented as a live event in IMMA’s Great Hall. This was performed with her sister Cats Irvine (vocals), Louise Phelan (vocals), Izumi Kimura (piano), Sarah Grimes (drums), Hilary Knox (bagpipes), Cherry Smyth (vocals), Liz McClaren (violin), Jane Hughes (cello) and Aura Stone (doublebass). It was later installed at Freiburg Kunsthalle, Germany.

Jaki Irvine lives and works in Dublin. She is represented by the Kerlin Gallery, Dublin and Frith Street Gallery, London and is a member of Aosdana.