Amanda Coogan

Amanda Coogan (born 1971) is an Irish performance artist, living and working in Dublin (where she was born) and Berlin. She studied at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin and under the performance artist Marina Abramovic at Braunschweig.

In her performance art, she produces video and photographs from live performances.

She explains how she came to choose performance art over painting::"I was making these expressionist paintings, but it occurred to me that I was more interested in jumping around the canvas than what was on the canvas." (Aidan Dunne 2005)

Her work often begins with her own body and often challenges the expectations born of context. Not deaf herself, she is a first language signer and in one striking work she dances to Gil Scott-Heron's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," while signing the lyrics. In a more recent work, produced for the Liverpool Biennial, she filmed local people headbanging to Beethoven's "Ode to Joy."

Coogan has exhibited in Marking the Territories at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, was an award winner at EV+A 2002 in Limerick, was selected by the Royal Hibernian Academy for the Eurojets Futures exhibition in 2003, and was an invited participant in the 2004 Liverpool Biennial. The Limerick City Gallery of Art hosted an exhibition of her installation work in 2005.

References

*Aidan Dunne (29 January 2005). Body of Evidence. "Irish Times" (Weekend review page 6).

External links

* [http://www.amandacoogan.com/ Amanda Coogan] artist's website.
* [http://www.rte.ie/radio1/story/1043103.html "Eye Candy"] 31 March 2005 a visual arts radio show featuring Amanda Coogan.