An interview with Méabh Breathnach by Ellen O'Connor
February 2026
This conversation is surrounding a body of work titled Feeling Things, glazed stoneware, brass, plumbing, 2025. This work was created by the artist for their master’s project in CRAFT! Ceramics & Glass at Konstfack University of the Arts, Craft & Design, Stockholm.
Q. Let's start with the bath. Tell me about those beguiling eyes?
To talk about the eyes I think I need to touch on some other things more generally, I hope that's okay -
In the making of this body of work I was thinking a lot about how we’re all connected by the use of many shared everyday objects, plumbing systems, and bodily functions. Crying is one of the first things we do when we’re born and an intense, vulnerable act most of us continue to experience throughout our lives. For me it has laughably become an almost everyday occurrence. It’s how my body responds to every emotion I experience deeply, always coming more easily than words. My tears are incredibly close to the surface it seems, ready to spill over at any moment and as such the thought of filling a bathtub up with tears doesn’t feel outwith the realm of possibility. My work often starts from a reflection on a personal experience such as this, and I hope opens up to something that may be shared.
Waterworks has in it impressions of my feet, bum, back and gripping hands. It stands on brass casts of my hands and feet, has a faucet comprising my closed crying eyes as well as a plughole containing my anus. I see the piece as two embracing, intermingling bodies - one in metal, one in clay - emptying and filling at once. It nods to time spent feeling deeply our emotions, getting to know ourselves and our bodies, as well as thinking about our relationships to others, when undertaking an act such as bathing. I’ve included within it impressions of negative space the body has seemingly carved into this object through instances of use to imbue a sense of this time spent as well as repetitive, habitual action.
It presents the paradox of the body as container and contained all at once and focuses on the limits and boundaries of the body I’m so interested in. I’ve included the eyes and anus to highlight this sense of an edge, as apertures where an interchange and interpenetration between the outer and the inner occurs. It is through these ‘erotogenic zones’ of the body: ‘those areas where there are cuts and gaps on the body’s surface - the lips, the anus, the tip of the penis, the slit formed by the eyelids, for example’ that the confines between bodies, and the body and the world are overcome.
Méabh Breathnach is an Irish artist and craftsperson currently based at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop. Their practice uses ceramics, metal and the body as materials, tools and sources of inspiration and understanding in the creation of both functional and sculptural objects.
Méabh holds a masters in Craft (Ceramics & Glass) from Konstfack University of the Arts, Crafts & Design, Stockholm and a BA in Sculpture & Environmental Art from the Glasgow School of Art. They have exhibited in Glasgow’s Pollok House, House for an Art Lover and in the Royal Scottish Academy’s New Contemporaries exhibition. They have been awarded the Sir William Gillies Bequest (RSA), Creative Scotland’s Visual Artist and Craft Makers Award, and the Young Scot Nurturing Young Talent Fund.
Q. The eyes must be what first draws most viewers in, like a homing beacon before the work reveals all these other bodily forms and impressions in unexpected (yet totally where they should be) places. I enjoy the feeling of following your sense-making as I take in the work. Your process unfolds and reveals itself. (Narrative sculpture?) Echoes of the quiet suspension of time in your bathroom. Intimate. Encountering your work is like stepping into that space with you.
There’s also delight here, the surprise of familiar objects like toilet paper reimagined in unexpectedly beautiful, museum-friendly formats. Could you speak to this, and how play is present in your work?
I think in this installation the brass features like the eyes were definitely what drew people further and further in, but at first I feel it was the familiarity of the ceramic objects, their scale, and the sound of water running that peaked any initial interest and curiosity. People wanted to be closer to the large bodies that were the sink and the bath, and then were enticed to explore more about them as their eyes are brought from feature to feature, and a narrative unfurled.
I'm really glad to read it feels like 'sense-making' to you, i feel like that is exactly what my practice is, my own way of making sense of myself and my interactions with the world, objects and people around me. The contradiction of the impressions being in 'unexpected (yet totally where they should be) places' feels really important to me too -- there's nothing hugely out of the ordinary occurring, feet have become the feet of something else, my body has manipulated what was once an incredibly manipulatable material, parts that expel liquid daily continue to expel liquid, yet there is still a small element of surprise that I hope elicits some feeling of recognition, connection and indeed, delight! At the very least, I delighted in making these works.
The way that I approach thinking about the objects I want to work with has become more playful since I started making this work 2 years ago. Previously I would agonise over my specific connection to an object before allowing myself to work with it, and now I have much more ease in allowing myself simply to play with what an object could become or what it might make me feel if I were able to squeeze it or bite it or bend it or splice it with a particular part of my body.
While touching on intimate and heartfelt experiences, I also want a lightness and playfulness to come through in the work. I hope this is true of the Toilet Paper Tiles you mention. I’ve been keeping an archive of toilet paper patterns for a few years now - mostly ones I come across myself in my day-to-day and on my travels, a handful donated by people who don’t think it too strange a hobby - without knowing what would become of them.
I feel the motifs translated perfectly to tiles, the more common bleached white paper in porcelain, and the rarer brownish wood pulp or recycled versions in a stoneware clay. I draw and poke each one by hand, relishing time spent memorialising something that we all wipe our asses with, and flush away without much second thought. The indented patterns with their perforated edges are really easily recognisable, some even more so as the one you might have in your own bathroom at home, or used last week in your friends’ house or on that Ryanair flight to visit your family. By bringing this imagery and thoughts of these often taboo moments into the realms of art and craft by translating them into more permanent materials I hope to lightheartedly and tenderly cause viewers to think on the intimate, absurd moments we all share as well as the production, circulation and life cycles of certain items and materials in our regular use.
I was particularly satisfied with the way I resolved to present these tiles, as it ultimately allows me or others to decide to install them in a myriad of ways - to keep playing with them in a way! It came about as a result of a dissatisfaction with previous installations I'd made including collections of tiles (see Home Discomforts & Minor Monuments). I had made these installations for specific sites and had actually laid and grouted the tiles as I wanted viewers to be able to walk on and experience them freely. But this rendered them almost unusable in any future configurations or installations and felt really wasteful. I thought for quite a while about what to do with the toilet paper tiles that would mean they could go on to live longer lives after the spectacle and ceremony that is a degree show exhibition.
This is ultimately what inspired the whole installation becoming a space undergoing some sort of maintenance and care, and the creation of the tile spacers and other tools.
I suppose the bathroom holds the rhythm of repetitive care and unavoidable time spent. Time measured through falling tears, running taps, laying tiles, each yanked scrap of toilet paper. There is no great mystery to what goes on in bathrooms, yet yours contains tender mysteries and celebrations of the usual. Your installation is both oh-so-private and designed entirely for the public. I am really enjoying the dualities. Thank you for speaking with me!
For more information about Méabh and for any contact inquiries, please visit their website: link
Images courtesy of the artist, 2026