2025
Exhibition Residencies
20/03/2017 - 19/05/2017
Bloomer’s creations of ‘machines that don't exactly work’ present a humorous and critical challenge to the dysfunctional and irrational technologies that drive societal change both in the urban and non-human worlds. Working mostly with the found detritus of technology Bloomer presents hybrid experiments that move across diverse concerns and boundaries placing himself and his work at the centre of the technological landscape and the many challenges, opportunities as well as dangers that underpin its unfettered development. His interest is in finding and exploiting unusual power sources, waste disposal sites, health and safety legislation and subverting public infrastructure. This highly collaborative practice engages with a wide range of communities and found materials through extensive fieldwork research and it is out of these encounters that the artist orchestrates new work and activates new sites of concern.
Paddy Bloomer
Paddy Bloomer is an artist, inventor, explorer and plumber based in Belfast. Bloomer studied fine and applied art at University of Ulster, Belfast, 2000 and 2015, and has exhibited extensively in Ireland and abroad including: The Imagined City Bus Tour, Household, Belfast, Ireland 2016; Tang, Geopark Festival, Korevlerne, Denmark, 2015; How things might go, Belfast International Festival of Performance Art, T13, Belfast, 2015; Meat Clunk, Golden thread Gallery, Belfast, 2015; Vstop prost / Admission free, Celje, Slovenia, 2010; L’art en Europe, Domaine Pomery, Rheims, France 2008; Anticipation, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, 2006* and The nature of things, Northern Ireland at Venice, 2005;*
EV+A, Limerick City Gallery of Art, Limerick.* Working extensively in the public realm Bloomer’s public art and outreach commissions include: Tchimi public art commissions for An Munia Tober Belfast; Machinations. Various projects working with Mens Sheds groups for Big Telly 2009; Ariel photography workshop, Belfast photo festival, 2014; Temporary places, Skegoniel, with PS2, Belfast 2013; Village works, Ballykinler, with PS2, 2011. Bloomer has been a regular contributor to the Vacuum free news paper in Belfast, 2003 – 2011.
*in Collaboration with Nicholas Keogh
Past Residencies