‘We influence everything’ by Cathy Scullion
'We influence everything' is a solo exhibition of new work by Cathy Scullion. Opening in The Black Box Belfast on Thursday 4 June for Late Night Art Belfast and continuing until 28 June 2026.
'We influence everything' is an exhibition exploring the politics of language, censorship, and expression. At the core of the exhibition is a single phrase, ‘we control nothing but we influence everything’, traced and re-traced from flyers collected at Palestine solidarity marches over the past two plus years. With collective resistance and protest movements in mind, this phrase speaks to both doubt and defiance: a questioning of the seeming futility of grassroots resistance in the face of state violence, genocide, and the growing far-right narrative globally; and a defiant reminder that influence and change happen when we collectively show up and speak up, in whatever way we can.
Removing the content of the flyers, and focusing only on the phrase ‘we control nothing but we influence everything’, the work highlights the importance of repetition and the physical act of protest: people returning to the streets week after week, bodies repeating their presence as a form of resistance. An unrelenting demand for justice and visibility.
Cathy Scullion is a Belfast-based visual artist whose multidisciplinary, conceptual practice explores human emotion, lived experience, and societal power dynamics on both intimate and systemic levels. Her work is grounded in materiality and process, often incorporating ritualistic, meditative methods that prioritise time, tactility, and repetition. These processes serve as both a personal form of reflection and a means to investigate structures of control, resilience, and vulnerability. Her evolving body of work reflects a deep engagement with the emotional and political potential of making, revealing how repetition, rupture, and repair can shape both artistic and human experience.
Cathy has been a member of Vault Artist Studios since 2018. She holds a First-Class Honours BA in Fine Art from Ulster University and a First-Class Honours MA in Art Research Collaboration from IADT, Dublin. She has received support from Arts Council NI, Freelands Foundation, and a-n The Artist Information Company, and has undertaken residencies at Belfast Print Workshop, Seacourt Print Workshop and PS2 Belfast.
Recent solo exhibitions include continuous fragmentation (Vault Gallery & Project Space, 2024) and As I Cannot Write (Vault Canteen Gallery, 2021). Notable group exhibitions include [de]fragmentation (QSS Gallery, 2025), Let’s Pause (NI Mental Health Arts Festival, 2024), wax rhapsodic (The Lab, Dublin, 2022), and Trilateral (PS2 Gallery, Belfast, 2019).
Link for further information: https://cathyscullionart.net/c-v/