Elayne Harrington (Temper-Mental MissElayneous) Elayne Harrington is a Sculpture & Expanded Practice and Critical Cultures graduate of Fine Art in the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, Ireland. She served the third year of her International BA Degree (Erasmus) in in the University of Arts in Poznań, Poland. Also known as Temper-Mental MissElayneous, Elayne is an accomplished performer in the Irish Hiphop and poetry world. She is an Access student who came from homelessness into third level education at NCAD in 2015. Elayne Harrington’s work explores restriction and oppression with the ideas of judgement and punishment often manifesting in the context of class. The themes and issues that arise spring from the repressive nature of society and the constraint of its social systems. Some of the works refer to conditions and injustices such as addiction and alcoholism, access to education and homelessness in a direct way. Other artworks take a more layered approach in dealing with generational poverty, classism and working-class experience. The artwork utilises wood, concrete, metal, found items and mixed media to create objects, which at first glance appear to be utilitarian entities, domestic or recreational and innocent in nature. Reappropriated entities are reworked to covertly interrupt their original function, providing playfulness with an undercurrent of aggression. An integral aspect of the work is engagement and interaction from the artist which incites spontaneous verbal and kinetic articulations that transcend the narrative of the sculptures and evolve the work to performance, spatial activity, duration and endurance.
