AFFA’s mission is to recognise exceptional original artists who live and work in the West of Ireland. We provide a platform for them through collaborations and partnerships with other companies and centres.
We are especially interested in securing opportunities for children to discover and interact freely with art and to have fun. This is our first collaboration and we are thrilled to work in partnership with The James Joyce Centre. This beautiful large Georgian house suits the Monsters perfectly. The Monsters inhabit the whole building. Children and adults can encounter them everywhere and enter a crazy fun world.v
Introduction to O! O! Monsters Exhibition
By Darina Gallagher, Director of James Joyce Centre
Laura Angell’s colourful textile works ripple with a playful sense of the wild and wonderful, their layered threads and shifting forms recalling the strange presences that inhabit the pages of Ulysses by James Joyce. Joyce called it ‘my damned monster-novel’— inviting readers to wander through shifting styles, dreamlike episodes, and exaggerated bodies and voices, where the monstrous becomes playful rather than frightening.
Angell’s textiles echo this spirit: bright colours collide, shapes stretch and mutate, and figures emerge like soft, woven monsters from the fabric itself. The monstrous here becomes a site of creativity—an exuberant overflow of texture, colour, and narrative that mirrors the restless invention of Joyce’s literature.
Detail of Laura Angell’s intricate textile work.
About Laura
Laura Angell is an artist based in Galway, Ireland, and is originally from Sheffield in the north of England. Using handmade textile objects, her work weaves together narratives that explore failure, status, success, and anxiety—often delving into the psychological issues society prefers to avoid, such as secrets, lies, shame, and fear.
Describing herself as an “emotional flasher,” Laura’s art navigates the tension between darkness and humor. Her previous work often takes the form of masks, containers, and covers—decorative veneers that symbolize the frantic thoughts and pressures hidden beneath. These pieces explore the contrast between our internal chaos and the facade of coping we project to the outside world.
Laura’s process is both therapeutic and compulsive, her labor-intensive methods becoming a personal coping mechanism. The repetitive, obsessive nature of her work reflects the emotional weight she tackles in each piece, with straight, controlled stitches symbolizing her need for control in the midst of psychological turmoil.
Her artistic practice is not just about the final product; it is about the catharsis and compulsive ritual of creation itself, where the journey of making is as important as the outcome. Her work offers a tactile and visual conclusion, sometimes aligned with her original intent, but often veering into the unexpected. This unpredictability, combined with the emotional depth and humor in her art, brings out a unique and intimate commentary on the psychological struggles we all face.
Find Out More
Exhibition Details: The James Joyce Centre – O! O! Monsters
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