Cass Breen is a London based artist. Her work draws on a wide gallery of ideas and materials informed by cultural background and personal history.
During her recent MA her sculptural works and prints reflected on how religious artefacts contain power beyond their material properties, embodying elegance and grotesqueness at the same time, and the way dark messages hide behind beautiful images.
Her most recent body of work flows from a recent winter residency in Newfoundland, weaving memory with landscape. The sculptures, prints and drawings observe the rhythms of the wild Atlantic, its bleak, cold, furious winds and luminous shifting light on the edge of this east-facing sea. East facing seas are a leitmotif in her personal history. Her work is influenced by the lingering sense of loss in Newfoundland after the collapse of the fishing industry and the ubiquitous presence of large fishing net structures in the landscape as fishermen scramble to find new ways of making a living from the sea.
The nautical theme is extended through her fascination with the late 19C Blaschka glass models of marine invertebrates, expressed in a series of polymer print works, featuring painting and chine collé. This is an ongoing project for 2026.
Her range of materials guides the making process and is intrinsic to the interplay of form and idea.
She is involved in several art collectives including Sedici, Kennington and Fold with whom she exhibits regularly. She was invited as a guest artist to show with the Critical Edge Collective in its Handbag Factory show in May 2025. In 2024 she was on a residency at the Pouch Cove Foundation in Newfoundland focusing on developing her practice.
Cass is an Irish artist, born and raised in Dublin. She has lived in London for many years, having completed a fine art degree in the early years after she arrived. She has an MA in Fine Art with distinction from the City & Guilds of London Art School.
Cass was Head of Faculty for Visual Arts at City Lit in London for 10 years, leading the highly influential department that encompasses the fine and applied arts. She moved on to become Deputy Principal at Morley College in Waterloo before leaving to focus full time on her art practice. Since then, she has maintained a London studio.
