Matthew Wilson was born in the North of Ireland in 1997, a place that continues to play a central role in his life and his work. His creative practice is centred around intimate material processes that are concerned with site specificity, slowness and sustainability. His artworks come to fruition through a variety of traditional and unconventional methods, as he works across mediums in response to the needs of each piece. Matthew views his practice as an intertwining of personal and cultural narratives, utilising storytelling to open dialogue between past, present and future. It is often anchored within domestic or rural imagery, the artworks created becoming anachronistic. Place is at the heart of his work, specifically the places that have formed him as a person.
Visiting Matthew’s studio, I asked why he had been drawn to Cornwall as the location for his Freelands Studio Fellowship, having chosen to be based at Falmouth University for the year. He spoke freely and with passion about the draw he has long felt towards the Cornish landscape. This ache for the land of a fellow Celtic nation was part of his decision-making process, but – in equal measure – so too was the ethos of the course itself. Matthew sensed there to be, at the core of Falmouth University, a focus on openness. Perhaps particularly to the work itself, which was appealing to his artistic sensibilities. This drew him in and allowed him to really step toward his own evolving creative practice. Matthew shared that lots of learning had taken place for him, but also that given the fact he had a full year on the fellowship, there was also lots of time for play.
Debris, dead horses and devotion: the art of Matthew Wilson
Written by Kerri ní Dochartaigh
A response to the material practice of artist Matthew Wilson during their 2025 fellowship at Falmouth University.
This ache for the land of a fellow Celtic nation was part of his decision-making process, but – in equal measure – so too was the ethos of the course itself. Matthew sensed there to be, at the core of Falmouth University, a focus on openness.
Play is a very important and impactful strand to Matthew’s practice generally, but this has certainly been allowed to grow and take deep root during the fellowship. He revealed that his time in Falmouth has been ‘so special’; that the School of Art had such a specific and dynamic energy; how being around students has been such a nourishing experience for his daily practice. He quickly noted that he very much hoped this was a two-way thing – that the students felt nourished by having him on campus by their side. He was moved by the fact that he is in quite a particular position as a practicing artist on the fellowship: having graduated long enough ago to have really carved a pathway in the world but remaining close enough to the world of the students that they feel they are on a shared plane.
This care for the flow between the students and himself as visiting artist is reflected in the way in which Matthew holds the space of the studio itself. His open-door policy at the studio encourages people to come in, walk around and engage with both him as the artist and the work as process on a day-to-day basis. This desire to engage with community in the here and now speaks such truth to how Matthew has continuously navigated the modes of both making and sharing work. He talked to me, just before his interim exhibition at the university opened, about the impact of working with other people on his practice.
Before taking up the fellowship, he had never taught a workshop in a higher education space. A huge part of what attracted him to Freelands Foundation was the nature of its work: the attention given to the value of teaching as a core part of artistic practice. A central idea championed by the Foundation is that of the symbiotic relationship between teaching, learning and making. This mutually beneficial mode of working creatively is at the crux of where Matthew himself wants to move with his practice. He described how this has evolved for him in real time as allowing him, ‘devotion of time to personal practice, but in tandem.’
Although his work happens mostly alone, Matthew is an artist for whom collaboration and community with other people really matters. At every turn of our conversation, Matthew found his way back to talk about other people who feed his practice: to the students, his ancestors, artistic collaborators, to the viewer.
Matthew wants the viewer to be a part of the journey in a real and involved way, as is evidenced by the work in Acting the Maggot, his interim exhibition. The first to be held in the university’s Goldfish Bowl Gallery following a refurbishment. The show is comprised of work created by Matthew over the course of the first six months of his fellowship. It is worth noting, here, the exhibition’s title. To ‘act the maggot’ is an Irish turn of phrase meaning to act or behave foolishly; to behave in a playful or silly way; to act the fool. Picture a wriggling, writhing, comical maggot – say in a children’s picture book – and you have got close to the phrase’s meaning. Rooted in play and harmless fun, this potent and pertinent phrase is one of a handful of uniquely Irish words and phrases that were added to the Oxford English Dictionary in March 2025.
The piece I am most drawn to – and the one I feel most tenderly speaks to Matthew’s work generally, as well as his identity as an artist – is one entitled Don’t beat a dead horse. It is a striking, evocative piece: a rocking horse, reminiscent of that of a young child, carved from wood. Beech, ash and sycamore, to be exact. Wood felled on Falmouth University’s Woodlane Campus. The piece is treated with beeswax, from bees from Zennor, just around the coast from the studio. Ab ovo, this piece epitomises the way Matthew moves through the world as an artist. He literally begins, as he has always done, with what he finds close at hand within his current environment. As a newly fledged artist on a home farm in rural Ireland, a child of a builder-contractor, the materials readily available to him were scaffolding planks and the like, and so that was what he worked with. This process of working with the material the landscape offers you has served Matthew through his creative lifespan and continues to do so on the fellowship. Even before the trees that would become the exhibition horse were brought down on campus, Matthew’s keen and industrious eye had found glitter in the dust around his new studio. Within a day of his arrival in the space he had already begun gathering, sorting and playing with the dust accumulated around the old fireplace. Listening to Matthew speak of this small but ritualistic act – the act of mindfully, methodically engaging with the debris created in a place over time – felt such a way into his practice; a key offered to the onlooker, with care.
The title for the wooden horse came early on, as his titles seem to. The piece had been percolating for Matthew for around a year before he began to carve a single mark. He recounted to me that the time at Falmouth has allowed him to really lean into this particular art piece in a moving way, encouraging him to give real time and care to this work made in Cornwall but seeded in rural Ireland in his early childhood. Horses have played a huge role in Matthew’s personal life. Their folklore, mythology and even just their very presence in the landscape of his youth have impacted on him immeasurably. The piece is carved in such a way as to leave the marks made by its maker visible on the horse’s form. Traditionally pegged, laboriously crafted through slow, repeated movements, it is a reminder of the old ways of the craftspeople of Matthew’s home soil. When I asked him – with regard to this haunting piece – about his relationship to the word ‘craft’, and how his time at Falmouth has played into his connection to home, he says something that has had a deep impact on me. He responded by sharing that he has long felt an ancestral weight on his shoulders as an artist, but that his time as a studio fellow has felt like an invitation to dance.
At Falmouth, Matthew has created a body of work that finely represents not only himself as an artist, but the journey he has found himself on since taking up his fellowship. At every angle of the space, as well as at every turn of his face in the early autumn light, the traces of much, so much, can be gleaned. Work and play, learning and sharing, making and dancing.
About the artist
Matthew Wilson is a visual artist currently living and working between Cornwall and Northern Ireland, and a graduate of Belfast School of Art.
Their artistic practice centres intimate material processes through the development of a unique methodology that responds to site specificity using slow and sustainable approaches. An intertwining of personal and cultural narratives utilises storytelling to open dialogue between past, present and future – often anchored within domestic or rural imagery, the works become anachronistic.
About the author
Kerri ní Dochartaigh is a mother, writer, holder and grower, exploring ideas of one-anotherness, interconnectedness and ecologies of care, in the west of Ireland with her family.
About the programme
Launched in 2021, the Freelands Studio Fellowship takes place annually to connect six artists with partnered UK host universities. The programme aims to foster a symbiotic relationship between teaching and artistic practice to enrich both artists’ and students’ work, facilitated by the environment of the artist studio and within the specific context of an art school.