The artists nominated by
Emma O’Brien is an artist with whom we became well acquainted during her participation in PhotoIreland’s Professional Development Programme. We consider this
nomination an organic next step in her progression as a professional artist. Her work The Holding Place considers the politics of motherhood and domestic labour, exposing patriarchal systems still present within home environments.
Patrick O’Byrne is an emerging artist whose practice, though quiet on first sight, lingers and grows louder within, engrossing the viewer in its multi-layered narratives. In I’ll be damned, O’Byrne looks at the history of his father growing up against the backdrop of Catholicism and alcoholism in Ireland, interrogating subjects of masculinity and sexual identity.
Through the stories and histories of Irish women, artist Pauline Rowan collaborates with a small community of people as they continue to care for a convent and garden
site marked for demolition. Under a Vaulted Sky uses photography, the artist’s own performative response, and collage work to talk about land control and concepts of home and belonging.
Ronan McCall is better known for his commercial photographic work, but we feel his personal practice deserves further attention. McCall is a film photographer, processing and printing his own work. He creates indelible imagery of cinematic landscapes and extraordinary portraits, proffering alternative narratives of reality whilst commenting on pertinent issues.
Through playful approaches, Cian Burke investigates the role of imagination in scientific systems and methods of work. His project, I fear that the magic has left this
place, takes a Swedish government manual – titled ‘If Crisis or War Comes’ – as a departure point for meditations on home, the future, threat and protection.
Emma O’Brien is an artist with whom we became well acquainted during her participation in PhotoIreland’s Professional Development Programme. We consider this
nomination an organic next step in her progression as a professional artist. Her work The Holding Place considers the politics of motherhood and domestic labour, exposing patriarchal systems still present within home environments.
Patrick O’Byrne is an emerging artist whose practice, though quiet on first sight, lingers and grows louder within, engrossing the viewer in its multi-layered narratives. In I’ll be damned, O’Byrne looks at the history of his father growing up against the backdrop of Catholicism and alcoholism in Ireland, interrogating subjects of masculinity and sexual identity.
Through the stories and histories of Irish women, artist Pauline Rowan collaborates with a small community of people as they continue to care for a convent and garden
site marked for demolition. Under a Vaulted Sky uses photography, the artist’s own performative response, and collage work to talk about land control and concepts of home and belonging.
Ronan McCall is better known for his commercial photographic work, but we feel his personal practice deserves further attention. McCall is a film photographer, processing and printing his own work. He creates indelible imagery of cinematic landscapes and extraordinary portraits, proffering alternative narratives of reality whilst commenting on pertinent issues.
Through playful approaches, Cian Burke investigates the role of imagination in scientific systems and methods of work. His project, I fear that the magic has left this
place, takes a Swedish government manual – titled ‘If Crisis or War Comes’ – as a departure point for meditations on home, the future, threat and protection.
Cian Burke is an artist originally from Dublin, based in Sweden. Working primarily with photography, installation and text, his work sits at the intersection of documentary and the mannerisms of staged photography — where the notion of truth is up for negotiation. His practice is driven by a fascination in the role imagination plays in both art and various scientific systems of collecting and categorising, exploring ways in which both can be used for the production of knowledge as well as systems for the visualisation of certain perceived ‘truths’.
In 2019 he was selected for the 3rd cycle of the Parallel Photography Platform during which he developed his most recent body of work, exhibited since at Landskrona Photo Festival and Studio44, Stockholm. He has exhibited in Ireland, UK, Norway, Spain and Hungary.
In 2016 he self-published Terrestrial Excursions. His work was included in the Art & Theory publication (YPN Sweden). Recent awards include the Theodor & Hanne Mannheimer’s fund and a working grant from the Swedish Arts Council. Burke is based in Malmö, where he is the artistic director of Galleri Format. He holds a BA from the Glasgow School of Art and an MFA from Valand Academy in Gothenburg.
cianburke.com
@cian___burke
Emma O'Brien is a lens-based artist from Westmeath, her practice is concerned with themes of Mothering, family, childhood and home. In her current project The Holding Place she interrogates her role as mother, worker, and artist. Her work recognises and amplifies the notion that a mothers lived experience is a valid area of artistic inquiry. She aims to continue exploring the changing roles and cultural expectations placed on mothers through the 20th and 21st Century in future work.
Emma has a degree in Photographic Media from Griffith College, Dublin and is a member of Work Show Grow Photography School and Refktor Platform.
Recent achievements include publication of her current project as a TLP edition by PhotoIreland, selected as an emerging talent in Europe by FreshEyes and GUP magazine, this includes publication in the book FreshEyes 2021. The work has been exhibited in Group shows at FreshEyes Exhibition, Rotterdam, The Netherlands 2021, PhEST, See Beyond The Sea, International Festival of Photography, Monopoli, Italy, 2021 and Format International Photography Festival, Derby UK 2021. Emma is a Recipient of The Professional Development Award 2020, Arts Council of Ireland and The Agility Award 2021, by the Arts Council of Ireland.
Patrick O'Byrne is a visual artist and writer from Tallaght, Dublin currently based in Berlin, Germany. He recently acquired his BA in Photography at the Institute of Art and Design, Dun Laoghaire. His work focuses on the familial and the themes which inhabit it, finding himself drawn to the distinctions and collaborations between people and place. His relationship to photography finds itself inhabited within time and memory, using it as a device to explore the past in some attempt to reconcile with his own self-identity.
Pauline Rowan received a distinction for her MFA in Photography from Ulster University in 2019. Since graduating Rowan has been invited by Paul Seawright and Peter Richards to exhibit in Dissolving Histories – New Narratives, Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast. Rowan was awarded an Arts Council of Ireland Bursary in both 2020 and 2021. She lives in Dublin, Ireland.
Rowan explores sanctuary, as well as home, through landscapes, settlements and our underpinned relationships with belonging and abandonment. With a background in Fine Art and Film, her predominately lens based works incorporate documentary as well as collaborative and performative elements. Rowan is interested in layers of history in place, family and society, systems of defensive and offensive tactics used upon land, home and ritual.
Ronan McCall is an Irish photographer from Dublin. He currently lives on Inis Oírr on the Aran Islands. From there, he is remotely working on multiple photography projects, where he engages with the photographic and print processes in their entirely with a home-built colour and black & white darkroom. He has undertaken several documentary projects, one of which received an award from his BA in Dublin. Previous to this he won the internationally recognized British Design and Advertising Award in 2007 – both in student of the year and overall photography categories. He owned and curated his own gallery in Dublin, Severed Head, for several years showing international artists such Esther Teichmann, Noemi Goudal and Dallas Seitz. In 2013 he moved to New York and pursued a successful career in fashion advertising as a lighting specialist. His clients include brands like Dior, Louis Vuitton, Off White, Dazed, Another magazine, Fendi, Self Service magazine, Marni, Balenciaga, The New Yorker, Stella McCartney, Wall Street Journal, New York Times.
