Miriam O’ Connor, Fox=Cow

Fox=Cow

Fox=Cow is a project consisting of 8071 photographs automatically generated by a wildlife camera, intermittently over a period of two years. O’ Connor enlisted the camera, like a subcontractor, to produce photographs for her that she had no time to make herself. As a full-time carer for her mum and minder of the family farm, the camera enabled her to sustain her art practice while she committed time to caring for others.

With its capacity to generate large volumes of photographs in short periods of time, it soon became clear that the camera was more of a problem than a solution. Multiple photographs of similar scenes made the process of decision-making about what to keep or what to dismiss a new thief of her time. Photographs were regularly repeated, subjects too dark, too bright, too near, too far away. Days, dates, times, and years frequently got muddled up. Organisational tools and language rooted in everyday life were called on to make sense of the digital mess. Photographs were coerced into categories, filed into folders, stuffed into digital drawers in futile attempts to make sense.

After countless and often pointless schemes to order, configure, and control, the solution revolved around concepts of letting go. It lay in accepting the inconsistencies and finding ways to tolerate the shortcomings and mistakes. The remedy uncovered a shared set of traits between the camera and caring, where moments of endearment, points in time worth remembering, or rare occasions of time well spent, mixed haphazardly, like cake ingredients, with half-finished jobs, incomplete lists, with repetitive, never-ending work.  

For this presentation of Fox=Cow, a selection of random photographs is chosen from the large repository and presented in combinations, sequences, and sets. The selection pays homage to moments that matter, to things that feel important, to points in time worthy of attention. Universal paper ratios of A4, A3, and A2 serve as spaces to reflect on the dual nature of Miriam’s life, of care and caring, of work and play, of day and night, of seen and unseen work. Variable presentational strategies echo the non-linear ways in which the work was often produced and appraised, in bits and pieces, in fits and bursts, and regularly, towards the end of the day.

Miriam O’ Connor

Miriam O’ Connor is a visual artist and small farmer from Cork in southern Ireland. She received a BA in Photography from DIT (now TU Dublin) in 2007 and a Research Master’s at Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology in 2011. In her lens-based practice, she is curious about the multifaceted roles photography occupies in culture and the manner in which this persuasive medium permeates the way we encounter the world around us. She employs photography in conceptual, playful, and inquisitive ways, and her projects regularly acknowledge the complexities and limitations of the medium that communicate her ideas. Her practice primarily encompasses photography, text, and printed matter, while diverse methods, approaches, and contexts are frequently employed for presenting her ideas. Following her relocation to the family farm in recent years, she occupies a dual role of artist and farmer and is interested in engaging with the elasticity and functionality of photography through everyday agricultural life. In attending to her day-to-day farming tasks, she often wonders what photography should do, or how, like other things on the farm, it could be put to work in meaningful ways.

Recent awards include Cork County Council – Creative Artists Bursary (2026), Arts Council Visual Artist Bursary (2024), Platform 31 Award (2022), Arts Council Agility Award (2021), Arts Council Visual Artist Bursary (2020), and the Visual Artists Ireland Experiment! Award (2020). O’ Connor was recently selected for PhotoIreland’s New Irish Works Programme, 2025 – 2027. Recent work includes Not Business As Usual, a new commission with the Glucksman and Cork University Business School for the UCC Art Collection (2023), The Fertiliser Spreader in ‘A Growing Enquiry, Art and Agriculture’ at the Royal Hibernian Academy (2022), Camera at the Mart at Roscommon Arts Centre (2022). Other recent solo shows include Tomorrow is Sunday at Macroom Town Hall, Co. Cork (2021), at Ashford Gallery, RHA, Dublin (2021), and Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh (2020). Publications include the Condition Report Register (2022), Tomorrow is Sunday (2020), The Legacy Project (2013), and Attention Seekers (2012). Her work is part of FUTURES, a photography platform that pools the resources and talent programmes of leading photography institutions across Europe, and A Woman’s Work, a project that uses photography and digital media to challenge the dominant view of gender and industry in Europe. She is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Cork County Council, Visual Artists Ireland, and Culture Ireland.

Miriam O’ Connor, Fox=Cow
New Irish Works series 2025–27
Launch 6pm Thu 14 May 2026
Running 15 May–9 August 2026
At the International Centre for the Image