With Everything We’ve Got! (2023) at Hedge School, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. 16mm film photograph. Photograph by Léann Herlihy.
With Everything We’ve Got! (2023) at Hedge School, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. 16mm film photograph. Photograph by Léann Herlihy.
With Everything We’ve Got! (2022) at Spring Survival School, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. 16mm film photograph. Photograph by Léann Herlihy.
With Everything We’ve Got! (2022) at Spring Survival School, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. 16mm film photograph. Photograph by Léann Herlihy.
With Everything We’ve Got! (2022) at Spring Survival School, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. 16mm film photograph. Photograph by Léann Herlihy.
With Everything We’ve Got! (2022) at Spring Survival School, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. 16mm film photograph. Photograph by Léann Herlihy.
With Everything We’ve Got! (2022) at Spring Survival School, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. 16mm film photograph. Photograph by Léann Herlihy.
With Everything We’ve Got! (2023) at Hedge School, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. 16mm film photograph. Photograph by Léann Herlihy.
With Everything We’ve Got! (2023) at Hedge School, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. 16mm film photograph. Photograph by Léann Herlihy.
With Everything We’ve Got! (2023) at Hedge School, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. 16mm film photograph. Photograph by Léann Herlihy.
With Everything We’ve Got! (2023) at Hedge School, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. 16mm film photograph. Photograph by Léann Herlihy.
With Everything We’ve Got! (2023) at Hedge School, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. 16mm film photograph. Photograph by Léann Herlihy.
With Everything We’ve Got! [wrestling classes] (2022-?)
Wrestling and self-defence classes
With Everything We’ve Got! is an expanding transdisciplinary project which rigorously and creatively critiques the positioning of Otherness in a heteronormative society. Transgressing beyond ‘Other' as another tick-box to choose from, With Everything We’ve Got! explores the generative capacity of collective engagement and resistance when we abolish colonial and capitalist prescriptions of personhood, the body and gender. With Everything We’ve Got! takes inspiration from the collaborative essay Building an Abolitionist Trans and Queer Movement With Everything We've Got¹, as a theoretical grounding that presents conceptual and practical tools to unravel the complicated entanglements of surveillance, policing, imprisonment and the production of gender normativity. Thus, pivotal to the manifestation of With Everything We’ve Got! is an in-depth exploration of Black feminism and abolition, offering alternative methods towards cultivating more complex and nuanced narratives regarding the subjectivity of gender minorities and their ongoing liberation.
In physicality, With Everything We’ve Got! first began as a series of beginner wrestling classes under the same title which I co-facilitated with my long-term support system and collaborator, Roma Mary Loudon. Building on frameworks of coalition, we work towards movements of collectively holding, supporting and fighting for one another. Reflective of the world we are currently existing in, these classes naturally segued into self-defence classes, ultimately leading us to explore the question: who gets to defend themselves?
Explored through numerous caveats of theoretical and embodied research of varying intensities since 2022, With Everything We’ve Got! has predominantly taken place in community settings of LGBTQIA+ self-defence classes with opportunities to exhibit work-in-progress in the group show Reflex Blue (2023) at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios as well as two-person exhibitions False Start → (2025) at GOMA Gallery of Modern Art and pass the baton (2025) Galway Arts Centre. Research has been undertaken during residency programmes: TBG+S/HIAP International Residency Exchange, Helsinki International Artists Programme, Helsinki (2024); Sirius Arts Centre, Cork; Askeaton Contemporary Art International Residency Exchange in Hyde Park Art Centre, Chicago (2026).
This ongoing work is indebted to the community-led LGBTQIA+ self-defence groups Leeds Queer Self-Defence (UK), Leeds Queer Wrestling (UK), Bender Defenders (UK), Dyke Fight Club (US), Pop Gym (US), Fearless Queers (US), Bash Bash Revolution (US) and Otwarte Serca Zaciśnięte Pięści / Open Heart Closed Fist (PL), as well as the archivists and librarians from the Sports and Leisure Archive in the Canadian National Museum of History (CA), Bishopsgate Institute (UK) and Lesbian Herstory Archive (US).
With Everything We’ve Got! has been supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Firestation Artist’s Studios, Galway Arts Centre, Askeaton Contemporary Art and Helsinki International Artists Programme.
Wrestling and self-defence classes
With Everything We’ve Got! is an expanding transdisciplinary project which rigorously and creatively critiques the positioning of Otherness in a heteronormative society. Transgressing beyond ‘Other' as another tick-box to choose from, With Everything We’ve Got! explores the generative capacity of collective engagement and resistance when we abolish colonial and capitalist prescriptions of personhood, the body and gender. With Everything We’ve Got! takes inspiration from the collaborative essay Building an Abolitionist Trans and Queer Movement With Everything We've Got¹, as a theoretical grounding that presents conceptual and practical tools to unravel the complicated entanglements of surveillance, policing, imprisonment and the production of gender normativity. Thus, pivotal to the manifestation of With Everything We’ve Got! is an in-depth exploration of Black feminism and abolition, offering alternative methods towards cultivating more complex and nuanced narratives regarding the subjectivity of gender minorities and their ongoing liberation.
In physicality, With Everything We’ve Got! first began as a series of beginner wrestling classes under the same title which I co-facilitated with my long-term support system and collaborator, Roma Mary Loudon. Building on frameworks of coalition, we work towards movements of collectively holding, supporting and fighting for one another. Reflective of the world we are currently existing in, these classes naturally segued into self-defence classes, ultimately leading us to explore the question: who gets to defend themselves?
Explored through numerous caveats of theoretical and embodied research of varying intensities since 2022, With Everything We’ve Got! has predominantly taken place in community settings of LGBTQIA+ self-defence classes with opportunities to exhibit work-in-progress in the group show Reflex Blue (2023) at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios as well as two-person exhibitions False Start → (2025) at GOMA Gallery of Modern Art and pass the baton (2025) Galway Arts Centre. Research has been undertaken during residency programmes: TBG+S/HIAP International Residency Exchange, Helsinki International Artists Programme, Helsinki (2024); Sirius Arts Centre, Cork; Askeaton Contemporary Art International Residency Exchange in Hyde Park Art Centre, Chicago (2026).
This ongoing work is indebted to the community-led LGBTQIA+ self-defence groups Leeds Queer Self-Defence (UK), Leeds Queer Wrestling (UK), Bender Defenders (UK), Dyke Fight Club (US), Pop Gym (US), Fearless Queers (US), Bash Bash Revolution (US) and Otwarte Serca Zaciśnięte Pięści / Open Heart Closed Fist (PL), as well as the archivists and librarians from the Sports and Leisure Archive in the Canadian National Museum of History (CA), Bishopsgate Institute (UK) and Lesbian Herstory Archive (US).
With Everything We’ve Got! has been supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Firestation Artist’s Studios, Galway Arts Centre, Askeaton Contemporary Art and Helsinki International Artists Programme.