Portfolio
The work and creative output of Early Childhood Creativity is that of Órla Kelly. Órla’s practice is multidisciplinary. She is a visual artist with a speciality in early years arts. She is a creative educationalist and an arts manager. One strand of her work focuses on making work for and with early years children, aiming to stimulate and support the naturally creative, poetic, philosophical and curious intelligences of the young child, mainly through installation, sculpture and story. Another strand of Órla’s work explores painted gesture, space and the land. It holds a type of visual narrative and speaks as much as it withholds.
‘‘Work that I create for children encourages many worlds,
one, the poetic and another the experiential, mostly via one-time
unrepeatable sculptural structures and moments, immersive experiences, proposing an
acknowledgement of beauty, the structure of a space, at once real and imaginary.’’
‘‘My work for an older audience examines the idea of longing, not in a Baroque romantic sense but in a deconstructed, joyous ‘what if’ way.
It employs gesture and material as a means of exploring this space through a type of physicality or physical manipulation of substance/non-substance, while aiming at a balance of this physical dance and a capture of the visual and non-visual (e.g. sound, wind). My work for early years audiences and intergenerational audience sit beside each other rather than on top of each other and are connected in spirit rather than style.’’
‘‘My work with children aims to explore a free imagination,
where real creation is an inherently intelligent action, done with concentration to understand the world and our relationship with it.’’
‘‘By creating the gesture and hence the work, I get to experience other spaces, leaving mine and going elsewhere.
It is not a therapy but a rhythmic, poetic visitation.’’
‘‘I omit all the city structures,
most human presences and simplify the work to the air and land moving, interacting with me, and resultant work often has elements of dualistic worlds, curated and spontaneous, thoughtful and careless, poetic and real, seen and unseen.’’