My interests lie in modern representations of folk customs which have been filtered, sanitized and reinterpreted by contemporary culture. These invisible social codes and practices, unconsciously learned through social heredity and difficult to assume by outsiders have intrigued me since emigrating from Ireland in 2011. These practices are as complex and multi-layered as an archaeological excavation of the land from which they derive. Many of the work created at SIM specifically deal with the pagan festival of Samhain and how it has been absorbed and transformed into an international celebration through generations of cultural dissemination. Do these newer practices, despite deriving from, usurp its original purpose or do they further its potency? The results are an uncomfortable mixture of unease and festivity, leading to a disquiet tension contained within the works.