Bio

Anna Macleod is a Scottish / Irish visual artist, researcher and educator based in the North West of Ireland. Her work mediates complex ideas associated with contemporary, historical and cultural understandings of land and water through a variety of visual art media. She has exhibited extensively in Ireland and Internationally since the 1990’s. Her recent solo show Tír Breac / Speckled Land at The Dock, Carrick on Shannon, Ireland took place during May- June 2026. https://www.thedock.ie/exhibitions/tír-breac-speckled-land

Recent awards include residencies at Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, Reach Scotland Residency Award to Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop and an International Artist Residency Award, Pasaj, Istanbul & Interface, Connemara, Ireland. In 2026 she has been awarded the International Atlantic Artist Residency Exchange in Newfoundland with CRUX and Artlink and the 2026 Jon Schueler Scholarship from Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, Scotland and the Jon Schueler Charitable Trust, New York.

Anna received a Platform 31 Award from Association of Local Authority Arts Offices & Visual Arts Bursary Award from the Arts Council of Ireland in 2021, an Agility Award in 2023 & Individual Artist Bursary from Leitrim County Council Arts Office in 2025 & 2026. Anna Macleod was an invited artist to 194th RHA Dublin exhibition in 2024 receiving the Moran Award for an Outstanding Sculpture.

Artist Statement

My current practice mediates complex ideas associated with contemporary, historical and cultural readings of land and water use through a variety of visual art media and sculptural processes.

‘Water Conversations’ is the overarching title for an evolving series of works, projects, public actions and installations developed through a critical engagement with archival material, fieldwork and community collaboration. The site- responsive works involve collaboration with a broad spectrum of human and non-human participants: materials, histories, landscapes, ecologies, cultural objects and meteorological phenomenon.

The intention is to build multi-layered projects that are socially inclusive and can activate positive cooperative action. Interdisciplinary in approach the sculptures, drawings, posters, public interventions, installations, photographs, videos, sound works and performative actions articulated during the process seek to tease out playful potential and speculative futures for our understanding of physical and cultural landscapes.

Water is a fundamental element supporting life on planet earth, its cultural, political and social resonances are universal and it is these common concerns that are teased out in the various iterations of water related projects. Each project responds to the local water situation in reference to its larger implications for human and non-human life forms. Often collaborative, I have worked with fellow artists and a very broad range of partners, local historians and storytellers, scientists and communities.

The ambition for this ongoing ‘Water Conversations’ body of work is to tease out the meaning of our human relationship to ‘place’ and to explore community resilience at a time of rapid social change and environmental uncertainty.