Alfreda McHale's art practice is located in a domestic setting: her studio is home based, and her work tends to spread across the kitchen table and throughout the house when a major project demands the space.
Her art practice is informed by this domestic environment, and by the fact of being a woman artist. Her background in medicine and her earlier career as a midwife has accentuated the interest in female experience in her artistic production.
In her art, Alfreda questions what it is to be a woman in our society, and what is particular to women's experience and perception, and how these specifically female ideas are transmitted from generation to generation.
McHale's emphasis on the feminine and the domestic means that she tends to use unconventional materials in her work; these are mainly materials which derive from the feminine domestic sphere. Using the Found Object discovered within the home, is often the starting-point for her choice and use of materials in her installations, prompting her audience to rethink their pre-conceptions of domestic life and to reconnect with their own memories of childhood in the home. McHale wears her feminism lightly, but it does underpin her artistic re-evaluation of women's roles in modern society, and their important but often overlooked knowledge and experience.