The artists nominated by
Looking at the universal through the personal are Clare Lyons and Aoife Herrity. Aoife’s practice is well grounded in her academic research, producing work that is calm and reflexive, and oftentimes understated. Rather than illustrating the complexities that memory and its failings conjure in the personal and the familial, with its altered or suppressed narratives, her work provides us with a series of unsettling scenes. Expertly produced, purposely hypersharp, and exuding a tedious grey, the images present a collection of tableaux without characters, depicting a troubling reality somewhere between nostalgia and memory.
Similar in topic, but with a very different visual language, Clare Lyons speaks of personal experience and trauma, and there is a sense of experimentation where the photographic fails to deliver. It is in this experimentation where she succeeds in her explorations, playing with low-fi printing and against the grain of the sharp and accurate, as much as with folding the resulting images to provide objects with obscure narratives. Such devices contribute to her conversation on such difficult topics, ambiguous and hard to unfold.
Audrey Gillespie’s practice brings together a diversity of media such as analogue photography, painting and printmaking, conversing around universal themes. Drawn from personal experience or direct account, they reflect the concerns of young minds around personal identity, sexuality, and the anxiety of contemporary generations. Her work is set in the context of Northern Ireland — seeped in a heavy and traumatic political history with ongoing conflicts of belonging amongst the youth.
These three artists manage to preserve the tension of such circumstances, but in doing so the viewer discovers sublime notes of everyday life, hidden between these persistent concerns. Meanwhile, Jialin Long and Mark Duffy look at the relationship between individuals and the state.
Jialin Long, though only a recent graduate, has already established a name for herself in Ireland, notably through her graduate project Red Illuminates, exploring the concept of culture in socialist countries and how state loyalty is cultivated. Using multimedia approaches and strategies, she explores social and political issues, but also personal issues such as belonging and cultural traditions, in order to propose alternative positions.
Mark Duffy has distilled over his last projects a distinct style, somewhere between satire and documentary, where humour serves as a catalyst for a poignant conversation around key political issues. Having moved to London and while working at the House of Commons as a photographer, his life and practice suffered a dramatic turn when his unflattering images of politicians became the focus of attention of the Parliament media team, followed by a random house raid and other pressure strategies from the UK government. Leaving the position and continuing with his practice beyond this incident, Duffy engages with current affairs, such as Brexit, with his characteristic approach.
Looking at the universal through the personal are Clare Lyons and Aoife Herrity. Aoife’s practice is well grounded in her academic research, producing work that is calm and reflexive, and oftentimes understated. Rather than illustrating the complexities that memory and its failings conjure in the personal and the familial, with its altered or suppressed narratives, her work provides us with a series of unsettling scenes. Expertly produced, purposely hypersharp, and exuding a tedious grey, the images present a collection of tableaux without characters, depicting a troubling reality somewhere between nostalgia and memory.
Similar in topic, but with a very different visual language, Clare Lyons speaks of personal experience and trauma, and there is a sense of experimentation where the photographic fails to deliver. It is in this experimentation where she succeeds in her explorations, playing with low-fi printing and against the grain of the sharp and accurate, as much as with folding the resulting images to provide objects with obscure narratives. Such devices contribute to her conversation on such difficult topics, ambiguous and hard to unfold.
Audrey Gillespie’s practice brings together a diversity of media such as analogue photography, painting and printmaking, conversing around universal themes. Drawn from personal experience or direct account, they reflect the concerns of young minds around personal identity, sexuality, and the anxiety of contemporary generations. Her work is set in the context of Northern Ireland — seeped in a heavy and traumatic political history with ongoing conflicts of belonging amongst the youth.
These three artists manage to preserve the tension of such circumstances, but in doing so the viewer discovers sublime notes of everyday life, hidden between these persistent concerns. Meanwhile, Jialin Long and Mark Duffy look at the relationship between individuals and the state.
Jialin Long, though only a recent graduate, has already established a name for herself in Ireland, notably through her graduate project Red Illuminates, exploring the concept of culture in socialist countries and how state loyalty is cultivated. Using multimedia approaches and strategies, she explores social and political issues, but also personal issues such as belonging and cultural traditions, in order to propose alternative positions.
Mark Duffy has distilled over his last projects a distinct style, somewhere between satire and documentary, where humour serves as a catalyst for a poignant conversation around key political issues. Having moved to London and while working at the House of Commons as a photographer, his life and practice suffered a dramatic turn when his unflattering images of politicians became the focus of attention of the Parliament media team, followed by a random house raid and other pressure strategies from the UK government. Leaving the position and continuing with his practice beyond this incident, Duffy engages with current affairs, such as Brexit, with his characteristic approach.
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 is a guest lecturer at IADT Dun Laoghaire and has led workshops at the Gallery of Photography, Dublin. Herrity’s work has been shown at a number of exhibitions in Ireland and is held in public collections with the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the Office of Public Works. Private collections are held in Ireland, Canada and the USA.
Herrity’s current area of interest relates to the wider subject of childhood sexual abuse, speciıcally 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 is a 22 year old Irish fine artist from Derry, Northern Ireland. Currently residing in Belfast, where she graduated from 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' last exhibited at the Mac, Belfast, in 2020.
Clare Lyons (b.1993) is a visual artist and photographer working between Dublin and Belfast. She holds an MFA in Photography from the Belfast School of Art in Ulster University where she studied under the tutelage of Ken Grant, Donovan Wylie, Clare Gallagher and Ailbhe Greaney.
Clare’s practice finds its concern in the tactile nature of the photographic image. Emphasising the materiality of the photograph, she explores themes of memory, trauma and her personal struggles with mental illness. Considering the photograph as an object is integral to Clare's practice, and she has strived to develop methodologies which seek to draw attention to this through crafting, experimental printmaking, and working with sculptural processes. Often, for Clare, the photograph is not "enough" and additional interventions must be made with and upon the surface of the image to tease out the difficult topics explored in her work. Clare's practice is motivated by the hope to achieve catharsis through creating and making, and also to encourage a more healthy conversation surrounding the deeply personal themes which arise in her work.
Clare is a 2019-2020 recipient of the Universities Ireland North/South Postgraduate Scholarship, and in 2021 was selected by PhotoIreland to represent Ireland for the Futures Photography Platform. Clare is a studio artist at the Emerging Artist Hub in Flax Art Studios, Belfast.
Jialin Long (b. 1983) is a lens-based artist was 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 honors 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 and published with many photography institutions throughout Ireland, Europe, the UK, and Canada.
Long holds an ME in Electronic Engineering and previously worked as an engineer before turning her interest to photography. These experiences influenced her view on understanding the world. She sees the world logic and abstract simultaneously, which formed the base of her visual practice. Long is currently working on a commission for Dublin City Council around the theme of diversity, challenging stereotyped views of the Chinese community in Ireland, and named in The Irish Times’ 50 people to watch in 2021: The best young talent in Ireland.
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.
