Elena Gallagher
Visual Artist
Elena Gallagher (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Dublin, Ireland. Rooted in expanded painting and site-specific practices, their work critically engages with the entangled relationships between place, perception, and identity. Central to their methodology is walking—as both a research strategy and a way of attuning to the landscapes they move through. Through embodied navigation and sustained observation, Gallagher investigates the spatial, social, and material infrastructures that shape our understanding of the everyday environment. Their practice interrogates how identity is both constructed by and inscribed within the spaces we inhabit.
Materiality plays a pivotal role in this inquiry: Gallagher gathers found objects, photographs, audio, video, and drawing-based responses to build complex, multi-sensory archives of place. These materials are then translated into layered installations that resist idealized or static representations of landscape, offering instead porous, provisional mappings of experience. Through disrupting dominant spatial narratives, their work cultivates alternative modes of engagement—foregrounding presence, attention, and interaction. Gallagher often eschews traditional exhibition formats in favour of non-linear, site-responsive presentations that invite the viewer to inhabit and interpret the work on their own terms.
Their work ultimately asks: What stories are embedded in the spaces we overlook, and whose narratives are made visible when we pause to listen?
They hold a Bachelor of Fine Art in Painting from the National College of Art and Design (NCAD), Dublin. Their studies and artistic development have been shaped by international exchanges and residencies, including at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts; Aldea – Centre for Contemporary Art, Design and Technology in Bergen; and the Barcelona Academy of Art. Gallagher has exhibited across Ireland in cross-university and collaborative shows in Dublin, Limerick, and Cork, as well as internationally at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts.
Their work ultimately asks: What stories are embedded in the spaces we overlook, and whose narratives are made visible when we pause to listen?
They hold a Bachelor of Fine Art in Painting from the National College of Art and Design (NCAD), Dublin. Their studies and artistic development have been shaped by international exchanges and residencies, including at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts; Aldea – Centre for Contemporary Art, Design and Technology in Bergen; and the Barcelona Academy of Art. Gallagher has exhibited across Ireland in cross-university and collaborative shows in Dublin, Limerick, and Cork, as well as internationally at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts.