Complex Drafts

As MLP x The Complex Writer in Residence (Aug-Dec 2025), Jessica Foley has developed a series of interconnected texts that move between performance and poetic experiment. Her writing explores how personal and political worlds overlap, tracing the textures of everyday life alongside the exhibitions and events at The Complex. Foley’s residency unfolds as an open, process-based inquiry into how language, voice, and performance take form over time.

Draft I is a response to UNICEF: A QUESTION MARK HANGS OVER GAZA which took place 25 July – 12 August and Anna Doran’s Roots in Every Room, which took place from 06-08 September as part of Dublin Fringe Festival.

Draft II is a response to Residues of the Garden of Eden, an exhibition at The Complex of Joanne Reid and Ben Weir, curated by Mark O’Gorman and Debi Paul. It also describes a visit to St. Mary’s Abbey, Chapter House.

“At a moment when the future of The Complex is under threat, this text feels especially urgent. It captures what makes a cultural space matter beyond bricks and mortar, like the relationships, conversations, risks, laughter, and shared labour that turn a building into a home.

Draft II reflects how The Complex has embodied a way of making rooted in slowness and collective practice, where people gather to think and make together. It stands as a record of what has been built there, and why it matters to protect spaces like this.” MLP Editors

Draft III is a response to Basma Al-Sharif’s film Long Life Witness, curated by Diaa Lagan, which was screened at Dissolutions ’25 festival by aemi, and to the exhibition 21226827118 by Colm Keady-Tabbal at The Complex Gallery, 24 October – 8 November 2025.

“Draft III is a response to moving image works by Basma Al-Sharif and Colm Keady-Tabbal. At its centre is a tension between “being here” and being denied a stable “here” at all.

Written from within the act of watching, Foley references Gaza, diaspora, Western spectatorship, and cultural institutions, which sit alongside banal sensory details, humour, pop culture, and Dr. Seuss, refusing a single register of response to violence.” MLP Editors

Sincere thanks to curator Mark O’Gorman (The Complex) and editors Gwen Burlington and Eoghan McIntyre (Mirror Lamp Press) for their openness, insight and support throughout the residency; to the artists Joanne Reid and Ben Weir, and to curator Debi Paul, for welcoming me during the installation of their exhibition, Residues of the Garden of Eden, and for sharing insights with me about their process and the art works; and to aemi for supporting my engagement with Basma Al-Sharif’s work. Thanks to all the staff, artists, and community of The Complex – it’s closure due to eviction is an indictment of Government policies on housing and the arts.