Emily McFarland is an artist working primarily in film. Rooted in documentary forms, her work explores how shared cultural, social, geological, and ecological narratives are constructed and retold over time.
ARTIST BIO
Emily McFarland is an artist and filmmaker based in Tyrone and Donegal. Recent exhibitions include VOID (solo), Derry; The MAC, Belfast; The Model, Sligo; Belfast Film Festival; Golden Thread Gallery; AEMI Online (solo), Dublin; Docs Ireland; AEMI, AMINI and LUX Scotland with Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) (solo), Derry; WRO Biennale, Wroclaw; Glasgow International; and Akureyri Art Museum, Iceland. She was selected for the 39th EVA International, Platform Commissions, Limerick (2020–21), and the Freelands Artist Programme (2018–21) with PS2 and Freelands Foundation, London. McFarland co-founded Soft Fiction Projects, an artist-run publishing imprint based in Belfast, and was a co-director of Catalyst Arts.
Above: Pollanroe Burn (Saturday’s moon was said to go mad nine times), 2025, Emily McFarland, 16mm Film, Giclée printed on Hahnemühle Photo Rag
Top left: Black Bog (2021), Shallow and deep (2021), Emily McFarland, 39th EVA International Platform Commissions. Courtesy the Artist and EVA International. Photo: Jed Niezgoda
Regularly collaborating with many voices — composers, botanists, activists, choreographers, archivists, water protectors, writers, and environmental lawyers — Emily’s works trace submerged, intersecting deep-time narratives.
Cloudberry (After M.P.H. Kertland), 2025, Emily McFarland, Installation view, Pollanroe Burn (solo exhibition) at Void, Derry. Courtesy the Artist and Void. Photo: Simon Mills
Haugheys Bog (2025), Still from 16mm Film, Colour. Duration: 25 Minutes
Using techniques of slow looking and attentive listening, her recent work forms part of long-term research into the shifting terrain and ecology of the Sperrin Mountains in West Tyrone, in the North of Ireland, in the context of industrial-scale gold mining and extractivism.
Pollanroe Burn (all the leaves - waterleaves - were turning brown like rust round the edges), Emily McFarland, 2025,16mm Film, Giclée printed on Hahnemühle Photo Rag.