The Exhibition

This exhibition is an experimental exploration of Irish textile heritage through immersive technologies and projections. The work engages with Irish motifs, patterns and the Irish linen industry, while foregrounding women’s central role in the linen production.

Drawing on Marylin Cohen’s Linen, Family and Community in Tullylish, County Down, 1690–1914, the exhibition highlights women’s skilled labour sustaining families, jobs, and communities.

Silk scarves reimagine motifs from Irish lace and floral patterns, translating historical knowledge into contemporary form. Several scarves are Augmented Reality‑enabled: viewed through AR, they reveal layered narratives and animated patterns. Projection mapping brings dynamic motifs to life on tulle and Irish linen, intersecting physical and digital layers with generative AI and immersive storytelling.

The exhibition asks: How do we translate textile heritage into digital space? What happens when women’s stories, often absent from the archive, are made visible through eXtended Reality technologies, projection, and interaction?

About the Artist

Jackie Toal is an educator, creative practitioner, and researcher whose work bridges traditional analogue processes with emerging digital media. She has a deep love for surface pattern, painting, cyanotypes, and mixed‑media experimentation, and is increasingly exploring the possibilities of immersive technologies.

Jackie has over twenty‑four years of experience in further and higher education, teaching across creative technologies, media, animation, games, and XR. Prior to teaching, she spent seven years working in  swimwear design, printed textiles, screen‑printing, colourist work for printed textiles, and interior design.

Driven by a curiosity about how traditional practices intersect with emerging technologies, her work explores how these combinations shape creativity. This exhibition is inspired by her home surroundings bordering Co. Down and Co. Armagh and her interest in heritage of the Irish textiles and the linen industry.  Her own grandmother worked in this industry.

Funding

This exhibition is self-funded by the artist.

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