Jessica Angela O’’Neill is a British-Polish environmental artist whose work investigates the material, emotional, and sensory consequences of human impact on marine ecosystems. Combining photographic experimentation, scientific research, and narrative construction, she examines how ecological degradation is embodied, witnessed, and visually recorded. Her practice spans analogue and alternative photographic processes, sculpture, and is currently expanding into painting.

O’Neill’s signature series, Calamities: Plastic & Fauna, emerged during the 2020 UK lockdown amid growing global attention to the microplastic crisis. In these works, she blends self-portraiture with cyanotypes of marine organisms, creating deliberate collisions between the human body, sea fauna, and synthetic debris. The resulting images evoke intimate yet unsettling proximities, positioning the human figure as both witness and participant in ecological degradation and inviting viewers to confront the emotional stakes of environmental harm.

A period of research led travel across Asia and the Southern Hemisphere has significantly shaped her recent practice. During this time, O’Neill encountered ecological instability firsthand; including earthquakes in Taiwan, a tsunami on Liuqiu Island, and severe drought conditions in the Philippines. While in Taiwan, she also experienced periods of extreme humidity and some of the region’s highest recorded air-pollution levels, encounters that deepened her understanding of environmental crisis as an embodied, atmospheric condition. These lived experiences, combined with visits to contemporary art institutions across the region, informed her ongoing inquiry into how climate volatility is sensed and internalised. She also examined audience behaviour and the haptic, sensory experience of artworks, extending her earlier academic research into embodied viewing.

O’Neill’s practice is further supported by her involvement with the Australian Science Communicators Association and her ongoing research into local marine ecologies in Manly, Sydney. This proximity to the Pacific coastline, and its distinctive biodiversity, anchors her emerging painting series, which extends her investigation into altered habitats, environmental narratives, and the perceptual registers of ecological experience.

Her work has been exhibited internationally at Somerset House for Photo London (2021, 2024), Fotografiska Shanghai during Climate Week, the United Nations Headquarters in New York, and Photo Swindon. Her practice has been featured in publications including VOGUE and Wallpaper. O’Neill lives and works in Sydney, Australia.