'Black Tie Event' is a video invitation to a formal event, to take a seat at the gradually unfolding mise-en-scène. Presented as Nature's Lament, a philosophic portrait, it captures global warming and spontaneous combustion in the natural landscape. Whatever the audience's perspective, the work requires an engaged humanity, a slow emergent embrace of the situation we find ourselves in, whether in the south of Ireland, kept smouldering by gorse, or a summer of wildfires raging worldwide. The deep crater in plain view of the roadside offers not a complete world view but asks for a moment of reflection. Filmed live-to-camera, the performance encapsulates an act of painting within the portrait genre, in Glencullen, Co. Wicklow, August 2026.
Paula Fitzsimons is an Irish artist whose practice engages with contemporary visual art discourse and performance, addressing the politics of sexual identity, the body in the landscape, the poetics of loss and the role of action as a carrier of meaning. Interventions respond directly to cultural heritage with particular focus on women’s experiences, investigating identity, society and political histories from poetics to philosophy. Exhibitions include performances and photography in Ireland, Britain, France, Poland, Sweden and Italy, with moving-image installations in Japan, South Korea and Dubai. From 2014 to 2023, Fitzsimons was part of the Royal College of Art, completing an MA in Painting with distinction in 2016 and a practice-based PhD in 2023. Research encompassed Irish outdoor handball alleys, women’s voices in Irish culture and the writings of James Joyce, articulated through performance, photography and poetic text to reflect on how future generations may inhabit the world. In 2025, Fitzsimons participated in the groundbreaking public hologram exhibition Immersion X in Gothenburg, Sweden. Her volumetric performance is permanently situated at the entrance to the Röhsska Museum of Design, where it forms part of an innovative city-wide augmented reality. In 2026 Fitzsimons made a performance at ‘The Heinrich Böll Memorial Weekend’, on Achill Island, Ireland.