Mary O’Neill is an interdisciplinary researcher whose work centres on contemporary art as a framework for examining significant cultural issues. Her early research focused on ephemeral art and the concepts of mortality and immortality; this has since developed into an exploration of intangible cultural heritage, with particular emphasis on the tacit knowledge and lost skills embodied in museum objects.
She has published widely in both academic and creative contexts, including scholarly texts and short fiction. Her work addresses a diverse range of subjects, including ephemeral contemporary art, boredom, loss, isolation, art education, meaning-making, and the ethical dimensions of contemporary art practice.
The Wolfe Island Collection, is an ongoing body of work comprising a series of artefacts from an imagined island and fictional academic texts that discuss these. Through these objects, the project constructs speculative histories that offer insight into the imagined lives of its inhabitants, blurring the boundaries between fact and fiction, material culture and narrative. https://maryoneill884258.substack.com/
Recent Projects include -
Coastal Consciousness; What Does It Mean to Live with the Sea?This is a collaborative project with Paul Stewart (Teesside University) exploring the significance of the sea in our sense of place and in the imagination. The project involved a series of workshops at Redcar Palace, Seaton Delaval Hall and Berwick Town Hall. During the workshops participants made objects as gifts to the sea and discussed their relationship with the sea. Over the course of a week O’Neill and Stewart filmed the North Sea coast between Redcar and Berwick-upon-Tweed. These images are integrated with the conversations and objects from the workshops. A work in progress was screened as part of the Berwick Film Festival 2026, Berwick Town Hall. The project is funded by SHED and The Cinematic Meet-Up.
Re-creative Practice: Learning from the Past, investigated how museum collections can function as active sites of knowledge production. O’Neill argues that museums are not merely repositories of objects, but of embedded cultural knowledge with the potential to inform contemporary practice and future innovation. Drawing parallels with fields such as archaeology and forensic science, the project examines how re-creative methodologies can enable artists and designers to engage more deeply with historical artefacts, moving beyond surface interpretation towards the recovery and application of embodied knowledge.
The Museum of Leathercraft – Ordinary Objects: Extraordinary Stories, a short documentary produced in collaboration with filmmaker Nik Trzcinowicz. The film is presented within a reconstructed sedan chair, based on an example from the museum’s collection, creating an immersive viewing environment that situates the narrative within its material context.