Using observed human incidents as the foundation of her work, Flanagan blends real events and experiences into fictional narratives across video, installation, performance, and writing. Through imagined scenarios, often incorporating elements of the absurd, she explores social structures and the political subtext of the everyday, focusing on affect, emotions, labour, and the body.
Her work is shaped by the environments in which it is created, interrogating how social experience is presented, transformed, and consumed. Cultural, socio-political, and geographical contexts inform her practice, offering a framework to explore psychosocial phenomena such as group formation and dissolution, the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion, and the intersections of agency, freedom, labour, and leisure.
At the core of Flanagan’s practice is an exploration of the complexities of contemporary culture and the human condition. Drawn to eccentric characters, places, and stories, she reinterprets them through inventive perspectives. Through framing, staging, scripting, and performance, she aims to expose invisible power structures, shifting identities, and the nuances of human behaviour. Speculative narratives, combined with diverse media and techniques, allow her to create otherworldly scenarios grounded in reality, often developed in collaboration with both actors and non-actors to blur the boundaries between the real and the imagined.
Employing a loaded visual language influenced by popular culture and shaped by her working-class background, Flanagan examines how individuals navigate their place within society and construct their understanding of themselves and others. Through this lens, she explores tensions tied to power dynamics, anxieties, desires, and fantasies. The result is a subjective, associative investigation of themes such as performance and agency, social class and collectivity, language and emotion, overlooked histories and media, and everyday forms of resistance.