VISUAL is pleased to present DRILL, newly commissioned exhibition of moving image and sound installation by Naomi Sex. Working with both professional and non-actors, Sex has written and directed a series of scripted performances. These vignettes consider language, social interaction, absurdity and the limits of understanding. On the title, the artist writes:

In sport, the coach trains the team using a drill, honing movement and skills to muscle memory. Athletes repeat and perfect a sequence of actions that can be applied with high level efficiency on the track, in the field, on the court, in the arena, or in the pool. Knowing the drill, as a term, is more widely used to gain knowledge around a system and successfully navigating it. Doing a drill in an organised way prepares us for the unexpected, an emergency - leaving a building quickly or disembarking a plane if it crashes. Drilling down can be metaphorically applied as well as referring to an actual power drill.

DRILL comprises a series of monitors, speakers and projectors, which present each piece as distinct but interrelated episodes, linked to each other in an installation that places the viewer in the centre of the work. Scenes of dialogue, monologue, prop work, movement and sound move between screens, leading the viewer around the gallery and through the work. The individual pieces share a cast and the common setting of a multi-purpose gymnasium. Sports and training equipment such as resistance bands and weights appear repeatedly, used for their intended purpose and repurposed as accessories and clothing. The repetitive and circular actions of certain games – at one point badminton players fill the gallery, playing each other on different screens – are reflected in the character’s scripts, going back and forth in indecision and disagreement. These reflect the artist’s interest in the constructed nature of language and its ability to shape perception and experience. She writes:

The theory of language continues to remain a strong influence on the scripted material. The micro format of the scripts aims to distil focus and audience attention span. Theorists such as J.L. Austin, Judith Butler, Eve Sedgewick Kosofsky agree performative “speech acts” such as promises, apologies, dares or bequests have the capacity to shift realty. The classic example of this is the marriage declaration, “I hereby take you to be my…”. While Butler and Sedgewick detach it from Austin’s 1950s heteronormative context, both agree that a couple’s lives ultimately shift by publicly declaring this commitment to each other.

The inherent artificiality and strangeness of these speech acts combine with the repurposed and misused sports equipment, the limbo of the empty gym, and the efforts of the characters to make sense of it all, to know the drill.

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Naomi Sex is an Irish artist. She writes scripts and works with actors and scenographic elements, prop-objects and video to produce theatrical gallery-based events and exhibitions. In 2019, Recent exhibitions and commissions include SPEAK BACK (The Complex, 2024); Small Night Projects Zine (curated by Laura Fitzgerald, Alan Phelan and James Merrigan), in response to Andy Warhol, Three Times Out (The Hugh Lane Gallery, 2024) and A Matter of Time, curated by Dawn Williams (Crawford Art Gallery, 2024). Sex was awarded The Arts Council Visual Arts Bursary, 2024.

Sex has been working for twenty years as an artist and lecturer. Past awards include The Arts Council of Ireland’s Visual Art Project Award, 2013 and Dublin City Council’s Incubation Space Award to produce The Synchronised Lecture Series; a performative event that featured in nine key Irish educational institutions simultaneously. In 2014 she was selected for The Artist in Residency Program at The Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) where she presented performance work at The Project Space and curated The 6iX Degrees event. In 2016, she produced Cheek by Jowl, a touring performance awarded The Arts Council Visual Arts Touring and Dissemination Award and The Fingal County Council Artist’s Work Scheme. Cheek by Jowl toured to Limerick City Gallery, Crawford Art Gallery and the Irish Museum of Modern Art. In 2017, Sex presented a solo exhibition entitled Surface and Silence at The Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, Ireland.

Sex served as Chair and Secretary of the Board of Blackchurch Print Studio and as a Director on the Board of Visual Artists Ireland. She is a full time Lecturer in the Fine Art Department at TU Dublin and works across undergraduate and post graduate courses.

Naomi Sex, DRILL, 2026. DOP: Jenny Brady, Camera: Barry Lynch. Features: Sean McDonagh, Niall McDonagh, Abigail Sex, Nóra Ní Anluain Fay, Ben Sullivan, Gokul Nath Ilangovan and Jundai Roche.