The Collision Project 2026
Thank you to all who joined us at Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh, Co. Cork, on Saturday 7th February for a presentation by artists Leda Scully and Lily O’Shea, followed by a conversation between the artists and Ellen O’Connor, Co-Director of Screen Service.
Marking the conclusion of their residency at Sirius Arts Centre as part of The Collision Project 2026, the artists expanded on their collaborative project ‘awkward attachments’, which explores the messy, contradictory attachments we form under late-stage capitalism. They focus on nostalgia as a condition shaped by time, longing, and the acceleration of everyday life, which are interests they both share.
The Collision Project is an annual initiative by Screen Service that supports artists in developing collaborative practices through peer-to-peer interaction and critical dialogue, culminating in a public presentation. Since 2023, The Collision Project has produced an evolving platform that supported over twenty artists.
This year, we evolved the format and partnered with Sirius Arts Centre to facilitate an ongoing collaboration between artists Leda Scully and Lily O’Shea, who previously participated in the programme. They spent their residency researching, testing ideas, and initiating and progressing a shared output through conversation and experimentation.
about the artists
Lily O’Shea is an artist based in Cork City, working across sculpture, drawing, and writing. She creates quasi-sculptural forms that evolve into immersive installations, integrating technical drawings and reflective texts. She explores methods of survival in a fluctuating ideological structure, while emphasising the need to reclaim and redefine our relationship with time.
Leda Scully is an artist based in Dublin, whose practice spans painting, installation, sculpture, and bookmaking. She draws on a personal lexicon of recurring motifs and found imagery, exploring the interplay between memory, affect, and association. This process of worldbuilding follows a dream logic, in which themes emerge and recede across different bodies of work to unify diverse outputs.
