The artists nominated by
Aisling McCoy is an Irish visual artist whose work looks at how we inhabit space. Her background as an architect is central to her practice, which investigates the conflict between architecture as an intellectual concept, created through images, and its translation into built form. She’s particularly interested in the ideological aspect of inhabitation and the role of both architecture and photography in constructing the ideal.
A graduate of the MFA Photography programme at the Belfast School of Art, Aisling’s work has been exhibited internationally. She is the recipient of the Arts Council of Ireland Next Generation Award, TBG+S Project Studio Award, Belfast Exposed Futures and Institut Français Cité Internationale des Arts residency award. She has been a selected artist at PhotoIreland New Irish Works and Circulations Festival de la Jeune Photographie, has been shortlisted for the Kassel Photobook Festival Dummy Award and nominated for the Prix Pictet.
Dorje de Burgh is Dublin-born and based photographic artist practicing since 2012.
His work is engaged in a dialogue with the dark poetics and reflexive potential of the photographic quotidian via oblique documentary, collage, writing and video. This practice draws upon lack, liminality, libidinal excess and the paradoxes of dematerialised (image) desire in a simulacral and schizoid semiocapitalist present.
He recently received a first-class Masters in Art in the Contemporary World from NCAD writing on the subject of Death and the Dematerialised Image.
George Voronov (b. 1993) is a fine-art and documentary photographer currently based in Dublin, Ireland. He is a co-founder of Junior, a print-only photographic journal, and arts organisation that celebrates emerging Irish photography. He holds an MFA in photography from the Belfast School of Art where he studied under Ken Grant, Donovan Wylie, and Haley Morris-Cafiero. In “We Became Everything” George Voronov attempts to photograph what a spiritual experience feels like.
Spending time with young people in religious communities and on spiritual retreats throughout Ireland, Voronov found that all those photographed shared permutations of one core conviction. This was a belief in the existence of two worlds. Our material world which we all perceive as well as a second, mysterious spiritual world.
The idea of photographing a link between these worlds, a nexus where the veil between them is thinnest, became a subject of fascination. Unpredictable and almost imperceptible but to those dedicated to their pursuit, such links take the form of fleeting revelations, subtle rifts in reality, and a feeling of connection to the divine. In these instances, the banal gives way to the sublime. They are metaphysical decisive moments.
Megan Doherty is a 26 year old photographer hailing from Northern Ireland. Since graduating University of Ulster, Belfast in 2016, Doherty’s exhibited both locally and internationally and continues to build upon her current body of work, embodying ideas of youth, subculture, freedom and escape.
Doherty creates a darkly cinematic atmosphere to reflect the need for escapism within small-town life. In her native Derry, the Magnum Graduate Award 2016 shortlister creates a fictional, highly textured and colourful world in which recurring characters are played by friends. In her work, the scenarios are a combination of composed and documented, depicting the vibrant culture of young adulthood from a distinctly more female perspective.
Yvette is an Irish photographic artist who lives and works in Dublin. Her practice looks to further her understanding of three main ideas, namely intuition, transcendence and narrative. She engages with different processes in order to investigate these precepts, incorporating photography, drawing and print-making. Yvette aims to create images that reflect the inner world and outer spaces.
Yvette holds an MFA Photography from the University of Ulster and a BA Geography and Economics from Trinity College Dublin. She has recently completed a certificate in Drawing and Visual Investigation at NCAD.
She has exhibited widely in Ireland as well as in France, Finland, Austria, UK and the USA. Yvette self-published her book The time of dreaming the world awake in 2014.
