For her work Bi-valve, for example, she bonded together several plastic bottles, then pinned plastic scales laced with red thread to them. The work is being shown at Collect art fair by Ting-Ying Gallery, alongside other pieces including Filament, in which a bottle top is seen emerging from fine plastic fronds. ‘They are beautiful to touch,’ says O’Shea, ‘like running your hands through someone’s newly cropped hair.’
The artist studied at Grennan Mill Craft School in County Kilkenny in her 20s, but it took her over two decades to begin pursuing her own creative practice – first by doing a BA in Contemporary Applied Art at CIT Crawford College of Art and Design, and then an MA there, which she was just finishing at the time of writing.