We are happy to announce the group of five artists nominated by PhotoIreland to join Futures this year. They are Aoife Herrity, Audrey Gillespie, Clare Lyons, Jialin Long, and Mark Duffy.
They will join the platform’s activities to present their work to international professionals and to network, amongst other opportunities that will be developed for them, including exhibitions, publishing opportunities, portfolio reviews, and more.
Discover more about them:
Aoife Herrity
Aoife Herrity is an Irish photographic artist and writer based in Dublin. She holds an MFA in Photography from the Belfast School of Art at Ulster University. Her ongoing graduate series Sleeping Dogs Lie was selected as a PhotoIreland TLP Editions publication and was published in 2020.
Herrity’s current area of interest relates to the wider subject of childhood sexual abuse, specifically trauma responses, implicit memory and the grooming process. Much of this work is brought about by research into literature, personal histories and psychology theory. Herrity works with photography, the written word and archival material as a means to unpack and examine these complex histories. Exploring these themes through critical writing is also central to Herrity’s practice.
Audrey Gillespie
Audrey Gillespie is an Irish artist from Derry, Northern Ireland. Currently residing in Belfast where she graduated with a Fine Arts BA degree at Ulster University, Belfast School of Art in 2020. Her media include analogue photography, painting and printmaking. Gillespie’s themes explore queerness, mortality and conflict with youth and anxiety through her current ongoing series titled This Hurts recently exhibited at the Mac, Belfast, 2020.
Clare Lyons
Clare Lyons is a visual artist and photographer working between Dublin and Belfast. Clare’s practice finds its concern in the tactile nature of the photographic image. Emphasising the materiality of the photograph, she often explores themes of memory, trauma and her personal struggles with mental illness. Her research includes topics such as emotional trauma and the resulting repression and suppression of memory, and more recently the significance in revisiting the family archive in establishing one’s sense of self in the face of such experiences. Visually, she typically takes the photographic image away from its original form in an attempt to tease out these difficult topics.
Jialin Long
Jialin Long is a lens-based artist, born in Beijing, China and based outside Dublin, Ireland. Her photographic practice focuses on issues in contemporary culture, uses new presentations strategies to explore social and political issues in an attempt to formulate alternative statements and positions. In 2020 she graduated with a first-class honours degree in photography from the Institute of Art, Design and Technology (IADT), winning many awards with her graduation project Red Illuminates, which has been exhibited within, and published by, many photography institutions throughout Ireland, Europe, the UK, and Canada.
Mark Duffy
Mark Duffy is an Irish artist based in the UK. Duffy’s artworks explore issues of politics, power and media in the public sphere. His recent ongoing work documents the aftermath of the UK’s fractious Brexit referendum, framing these themes with absurdity and humour. Duffy formerly worked as photographer for the Houses of Parliament (2015-2019) during which his photojournalism characterised many memorable front pages.
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