Introducing this year’s artists nominated by PhotoIreland to the Creative Europe FUTURES Platform. Aside from the five artists announced this year, PhotoIreland has put forward 20 artists in previous years, selected through direct invitation and an open call. Find out more at futures-photography.com Emma O'Brien is a lens-based artist from Westmeath, her practice is concerned with themes of Mothering, family, childhood and home. In her current project The Holding Place she interrogates her role as mother, worker, and artist. Her work recognises and amplifies the notion that a mothers lived experience is a valid area of artistic inquiry. She aims to continue exploring the changing roles and cultural expectations placed on mothers through the 20th and 21st Century in future work. While balancing unpaid emotional and domestic labour with full time paid work, Emma O’Brien placed her photographic practice on hold. It was an indulgence she couldn't afford, Motherhood demanded this sacrifice. As her child grew, influenced by Matricentric Feminisim and working with a feminist concept of intersubjectivity, “how to care for another and one’s self”, she began carving the time to explore her role as mother and artist. In The Holding Place she finds the quiet moments, the silence and tenderness absent from the intense days of working and mothering. Photographing her everyday, and using her archival smartphone images, Emma celebrates mothering and calls out motherhood. . . . #PhotoIreland #Ireland #IrishCulture #IrishArtists #IrishPhotography #ContemporaryPhotography #ContemporaryArt #ContemporaryIreland #FuturesPhotography