Event Details
Dates
31/05/2019 – 06/07/2019
Location
Galway Arts Centre
31st May – 6th July
Ursula Burke’s work explores abuses of power in many realms of the social and political in the West. Often, taking a Northern Irish context as a critical point of departure from which to generalise her approach outwards to international concerns. Formally, her work appropriates tropes deeply invested in the Classical, and re-inserts them in the contemporary, aiming to create a conceptual bridge between the Classical ‘ideal’ (in form/society) and the ‘reality’ of contemporary post-conflict Northern Irish society. The Precariat brings together a suite of work that seeks to investigate the experience of insecurity, fast becoming a universal condition as we struggle to subsist in an impoverished and increasingly unstable civil society, in which personal solutions are prescribed to global problems.
Ursula Burke is an Irish artist who works in a variety of media including Porcelain Sculpture, Embroidery Sculpture and Drawing.
She recently undertook an artist residency at Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris. She is winner of Golden Fleece Award and the Visual Artists Ireland Suki Tea Award – March 2018. She undertook an artist residency and exhibition with the Mattress Factory Museum, Pittsburgh, Jan – April 2017 and was awarded the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, British School at Rome Fellowship in 2014. She is Joint Prize Winner of the Claremorris Open, Ireland 2015. Recent solo Exhibitions include The Precariat, The RHA Gallery, Dublin 2018; The Precariat, The Dock Arts Centre, Leitrim; Solo representation at Supermarket Art Fair Stockholm by Ormston House Limerick, March 2017; ‘Vestiges’ at Ormston House, Limerick September 2016 & ‘Vestige’ at the Oonagh Young Gallery, Dublin, during May 2016. She undertook a major solo exhibition titled ‘Hope for a Better Past’ with the MAC Belfast, 2013 and worked with the National Portrait Gallery London on ’National Memories local Stories’ project during the same year.
She is an Associate Academician of the Royal Ulster Academy, Belfast, Northern Ireland. She has taken part in the following exhibitions internationally: Resurgence, Hillyer Arts Space, Washington, USA 2016; Irish Wave, Birth of a Nation, San Wei Gallery, Beijing, China, 2015; Displacements – The Trouble with being Human these Days, Ex Elettrofonica Gallery, Rome, 2015; Roman Remains, Transition Gallery, London, 2016; Arafudo Art Annual, Fukushima, Japan; Art of the Troubles, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, UK, 2016; SCOPE New York, represented by Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast, Northern Ireland & Art International, Istanbul, represented by Ex Elettrofonica Gallery, Rome, 2015.
Future projects include solo exhibitions with; Pitzhanger Manor London; a three venue co-production with Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris/ the Ulster Museum, Belfast and Visual – Carlow, Ireland and Gallery 126, Galway. She will also be undertaking a Windgate Fellowship at Vermont Studio Centre, USA.
She is a previous co-director of Catalyst Arts Gallery, Belfast, previous administrator and gallery manager of Queen Street Studios, Belfast and Associate Lecturer in Fine Art at the University of Ulster. She was a visiting lecturer at the Institute of Technology Sligo, Ireland and the Galway Mayo Institute of Technology, Ireland. She is currently External Assessor for Sculpture and Ceramics at the Institute of Technology, Sligo, Ireland.
Her work is part of the collection of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland Collection, The Arts Council of Ireland Collection, the Ulster Museum Collection, Belfast, the Office of Public Works, Ireland, the Harbour Commission Northern Ireland and in private collections nationally and internationally.
Image: The Politicians Embroidery Sculpture 2018 – Ursula Burke
