MLP x Culture File
GOOD GRIEF!
Featuring Isabel Nolan, Harry Hennessy, Freya Dooley, Bryony Gillard, Caroline Mac Cathmhaoil
GOOD GRIEF! is the second Mirror Lamp Press x Culture File audio issue featuring new work by Isabel Nolan, Harry Hennessy, Freya Dooley, Bryony Gillard and Caroline Mac Cathmhaoil. The one-hour radio show explores the five stages of grief, as defined by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance – as detailed in the book On Death and Dying (1969). These stages have become hugely influential despite the absence of empirical evidence for the stages' existence. It will be broadcast on The Lyric Feature on RTÉ lyric FM on 1st November at 6 pm.
Denial
Stock Take
Freya Dooley
Stocktake is a meandering sonic essay anchored by the imminent closure of a small, family-run pet shop, where the artist’s parents work, as her grandparents did before them. Her father’s recent major stroke, her parents’ retirement and her own pregnancy become intertwined experiences of change and recovery, prompting reflections on time, mortality, work and continuity.
Through motifs of paralysis, domestication and gestation, the work explores the vulnerability of animal bodies and the limits of productivity. It considers denial as a form of self-preservation: a way of resisting change and keeping going in the face of impermanence.
The essay also reflects on the artist’s own resistance to autobiographical writing, and the oscillation between procrastination and productivity that shaped its making.
Freya Dooley's cross-disciplinary practice encompasses writing, sound, moving-image, broadcast, music and performance. Navigating connections between divergent subjects, the wider themes in her work relate to the harmonies and tensions between personal and collective experiences, with a particular interest in structures of work and domestic life. Often rooted in close-range observations and informed by diverse cinematic, literary and musical references, her work often comprises semi-fictional narratives and layered soundtracks which expand outwards in scale; weaving together voice, electronics and instrumentation.
2. Anger
Let No Man Venture Near the Sun
Caroline Mac Cathmhaoil
Let No Man Venture Near the Sun is a personal piece that tries to reconcile the artist’s beliefs in Tibetan Buddhist teachings about life and death with the unwanted feelings of anger, hopelessness and despair that arise as part of day-to-day life in this era of ugly ethics and politics.
Caroline Mac Cathmhaoil is an artist and writer working between Dublin and London and the less explored regions of the cosmos. Recent shows and screenings include Mirror States at Project Arts Centre Dublin, Mirror States at Tulca as part of Strange Lands Still Bear Common Ground curated by Beulah Ezeugo; Aer Milam at Pallas Contemporary Projects / Betafest 2025; and ‘This is How I Roll’ at Betafest Unsettling the Algorithm – Seeds of Resistance (curated by Aisling Murray and Nora O’Murchú). Writing appears in Winter Papers No. 9, Gorse No. 13 and the Tulca 2025 publication. They previously worked both collectively and individually under the name www.loiteringtheatre.org and are currently completing a practice-based PhD at Goldsmiths College London. See also: @restlessidiom
3. Bargaining
Orpheus & Euridice
Harry Hennessy
Two erstwhile Lovers meet in the park, so they can see each other and talk and say goodbye. He tells her the story of Orpheus and Eurydice: of love lost, and the ways they try to get it back, and the madness of that. He asks her, come home with me.
Credits:
Voice of Eurydice: Venetia Bowe
Voice of Orpheus: Harry Hennessy
Cello: Risteárd Ó hAodha
Text and Sound Mix: Harry Hennessy
Harry Hennessy is a queer genderqueer writer and performer from Dublin. They were awarded the Northern Ireland Music Prize for Best Live Act 2025, alongside the other members of the RÓIS band. Their recent work includes ‘dublinitgirl vs dartlinediva’ (Dublin Fringe Fest. '25) 'Keening a Dead Town' x RÓIS & Crash Ensemble (Musictown '25) 'Faoin tSráid' (Alternating Currents '25) 'Cuckcrow' (Scene +Heard '25) Cack (Ranelagh Arts Fest. '25) Son of the Land (Earth Rising Fest. '24) & ‘Ar an Dé Deiridh’, an Irish language national theatre production that debuted at the Taidhbhearc in 2024 and subsequently toured South Connemara & Brussels in 2025.
4. Depression
In Room 30 of the National Gallery
Isabel Nolan
Isabel Nolan has always found it easier to think about depression in terms of things rather than words, particularly through works of art. For Nolan, artworks tend to perform their meaning to us while simultaneously resisting our desire to make them meaningful. This tension feels in keeping with a stubborn, incomprehensible, and painful condition that can easily be made trite or diminished by verbal commonplaces. The weight of depression is somehow held in those aspects of an artwork that demand our attention, yet keep us forever at a distance.
Isabel Nolan has an expansive practice that incorporates sculptures, paintings, textile works, photographs, writing and works on paper. Driven by “the calamity, the weirdness, horror, brevity and wonder of existing alongside billions of other preoccupied humans”, her works give form to fundamental questions about the ways the world is given meaning through human activity.
In 2026, Isabel Nolan is representing Ireland at the 61st Venice Biennale. Solo exhibitions include Southwark Park Gallery, London (2026), touring to Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool (2027). In 2025 Nolan participated in the Liverpool Biennal. Significant solo exhibitions include Château La Coste, Aix-en-Provence (2023); Void Gallery, Derry (2022); Solstice Arts Centre, Navan (2021); Boxes Art Museum, Guangzhou (2019); Grazer Kunstverein, Graz (2017); Douglas Hyde Gallery (2017); Contemporary Art Gallery , Vancouver (2016); Mercer Union, Toronto, Canada (2017) and Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2014). Nolan is represented by Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, and Sikkema, Malloy, Jenkins, NYC.
5. Acceptance
Tending
Bryony Gillard
In 2025, Bryony Gillard made a moving image work in a cemetery in Plymouth, reflecting on the labour of maintaining this space. As part of the project, she invited musicians, Tina Hitchens and Shirley Pegna to improvise with and respond to the site. 'Tending’ includes excerpts of Shirley and Tina improvising live in the cemetery chapel and draws on Bryony’s interactions with the cemetery's groundskeepers and her daily walks there with her dog, Nell.
Credits:
Text and sound edit: Bryony Gillard
Flute: Tina Hitchens
Cello: Shirley Pegna
Sound mix: Oliver Sutherland
Bryony Gillard is an artist, researcher and PhD Candidate at University of Plymouth. Situated between writing, workshops, performance and moving image, her practice reflects on events, states of being, materials and organisms that refuse or resist normative capitalist structures and temporalities. Recent projects include a solo exhibition at East Quay, (Somerset, 2026), a commission with Focal Point Gallery (Southend, 2025) and an essay and performance for Mirror Lamp Press (Dublin, 2025). Her work has been presented nationally and internationally including ESTUARY (Kent), Jerwood Arts (London), Playbill (Amsterdam), Ocean Archive at TBA21 (Venice), Tate St.Ives (Cornwall).
