About me

Short CV:

MA Camberwell (Book Arts), 2011. A recipient of Irish Arts funding and shortlisted for the Earlyworks prize. Group exhibitions in London include Printing Edge I and II at the R.K. Burt Gallery and Art Books at the Whitechapel Gallery. In Dublin: Art Books (same title different show) at Temple Bar Galleries. Collections include Chicago Museum of Modern Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, three national collections, The Yale Collection & Tate Britain.

Full CV:

BA (Printmaking), University of the Creative Arts, Maidstone, England.
MA (Book Arts), Camberwell College of Art, London.
BA (English and Philosophy), Galway University, Ireland.
HDE (Teaching qualification), Cork University, Ireland.

Group exhibitions:

Printing Edge I and II at the R.K. Burt Gallery, London.
Wallbooks and Red vinyl happiness at George Rogers Gallery, Maidstone, E and (uncurated) There-ir at pop-up gallery, Maidstone.
L.A.B. (London Artist’s Books) I.C.A. (Institute of Contemporary Arts) x 3
Leeds Artist’s Books at Leeds University x 2
BABE (Bristol Artist’s Books Exhibition) Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, x 2
One inclusion at Artist’s books fair Film Base, Temple Bar, Dublin.
The Chocolate Factory, (uncurated), Dublin.
Broekhuis Bookshop, Enchede, The Netherlands
Art Books The Whitechapel Gallery, London, and
Art Books (same title, different show), Temple Bar Galleries, Dublin.
County Council Offices and
St. Luke’s Hospital, both permanent, Kilkenny, Ireland

Solo exhibitions:

Something of Happiness at The Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny, Ireland, 2018
All of it and why also at The Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny, 2023-4

Collections:

Gund Library, The Cleveland Institute of Art, Ohio, USA
The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, USA
The Book Art Museum, Lodz, Poland
Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland
Helsinki City Library, Finland
Oxford Bookes University, England
Winchester College of Art, England
Tate Britain (Artist’s books collection)
The Irish National Library
NIVAL (National Irish Visual Arts Library), Dublin
The Yale Collection, USA

Publications in Ireland:

Circa, The Irish Psychologist, The Stinging Fly, The Cork Literary Review, The Connaught Tribune and The Irish Examiner.

Publications in England:

Envoi, Image, Purple Patch, Tears in the fence, Orbis, The Frogmore Papers, Ragged Raven Anthology, Routemasters & Mushrooms (an Earlyworks anthology).

Publications elsewhere:

Nocturnal submissions (Australia).

Awards:

Shortlisted for The Start Chapbook Award, The Earlyworks Prize, The Nottingham Open and The Plough Prize.
Irish Arts Council travel bursary for awarded residency to Vermont, USA.

What my work is about in general

Most briefly: my work is what each individual piece is trying to be, it requires you to add a stepping stone and it’s in defiance of death.

At the risk of sounding like a poodled-up luvvie at a tribute gala live from Hollywood on the night of a thousand stars, without you, my darlings, without you bumping into you – my work just wouldn’t work.

Generally speaking, it is a process of individuation – which is to say, it involves you encountering yourself adding the final piece of jigsaw needed. My work requires your contribution. My work requires you to notice yourself completing it. My work is you bumping into you.

With regard to all that can be categorised as ‘Contextual Theory:’ I’ve got a taunting backlog of unfinished projects so every day is a fight to carve out studio time. The Art which is prompted by over-arching debates about what Art is and can be is certainly fruitful but making art to explore what Art might be simply seems secondary to me. Broadly speaking, mine is an Art of options and debate, rarely of conclusions. It’s never deliberatly about Art itself.

My first question on seeing new Art is ‘So who are you to think I should see the world through your eyes? What makes your view so special?’ My work is very rarely autobiographical because there’s a vain impertinence in assuming you will benefit from knowing about my private life, stranger. That’s why I use fake names. Fake names also free me up. I cut away what doesn’t need to be there to leave what satisfies the demands of each piece.

Trying to make Art compelled by hopeless defiance of the great spoilsport is enormously enliveing. Trying to find and connect into the vast pulsing shared nerve net of understanding is an hilariously tantalising safari and the very least I can do to justify a very lucky life and blow what might at times be an elegant raspberry at the great maw reaching ashore.

In short, my work is what each individual piece is trying to be, it requires you to add a stepping stone and in grateful defiance of ultimate disappointment.

On Happiness as a worthy topic

Convention holds that the topic of happiness isn’t worth exploring yet the choice of happiness is as valid a response to helplessness before the void as despair. To dismiss happiness as a trifling concern strikes at the autonomy of the individual and limits discourse.

There is also a convention of disregarding happiness as a fruitful topic for Art, as distinct from, say, drug addiction. To explore the grim is to be unflinching. Perhaps this is partly prompted by happiness being so frequently portrayed as required gleefulness, as escape and bovine lassitude.

Anything that narrows discourse delights those who portray nuance and doubt as measures of irrelevance. As if doubt isn’t debate and debate isn’t fuel. Narrowing the meaning of happiness excludes acquired tastes such as tiles and art and dentistry.

Broadening the meaning of happiness allows for the savouring of incompetence or the ability to appreciate that which one doesn’t like, be it porcelain, or tangy apple flavour Hubba Bubba, or ease with fleeting exultation, whatever arises from rootedness in the now and fill-in-the-gap but I would add barges.

In short, my work is what each individual piece is trying to be, it requires you to add a stepping stone and in grateful defiance of ultimate disappointment.

About the Books

Anthony Eden

A glancing portrait of an extremely good and bad dead British politician emphasizing his beauty.
Litho prints based on altered archive photos, re-enacted photos and screen prints

68 pages. Soft back with dust jacket.
Dimensions: Portrait 11.5 x 17cms.
Edition size: 200

The deaf wife

Artwork by Christine Ellison
Design by Dara Ni Bheachain
Fiction. A couple embarks on a messy relationship, have a child, marry and respond to wife’s encroaching deafness.
Artwork from the deaf wife’s point of view, sometimes diverging from the text. Mainly pencil images with pale colours.

146 pages. Hardback with a facing double gatefold.
Dimensions: Landscape, 27 x 20cms.
Edition size: 500

Three mile water

Illustrated by Catriona Hardie
Design by Atelier David Smith
Fiction. What can inspire a defeated midlands couple?
Pencil images, some with colour.

32 pages. Hardback. Clothbound with paper sleeve.
Dimensions: Portrait, 27 x 20cms.
Edition size: 500

Where have you been?

Series of questions and related images.
48 pages. Hardback with die-cut.
Violet and cream illustrations.

Dimensions: Landscape 21.5 x 15.5 cms.
Edition size: 500

– Twinned with –

Collaboration

A record of volunteers responding to a book made of two Perspex boxes containing images and questions from Where have you been? On curled paper foils. Photographs and foils altered by the volunteers.

24 pages. Soft back.
Dimensions: Landscape 21 x 15cms.
Edition size: 500

, one moment:1

A record of a pivotal public moment.
Photographs.

24 pages. Soft back.
Dimensions: Landscape 21 x 15cms.
Edition size: 500

– Twinned with –

From a lilo

An exploration of whereness
Collage and photographs

24 pages. Soft back.

Dimensions: Landscape, 21 x 15cms.

Edition size: 500

When

Frenzied glances at stillness
B&W silhouettes

36 pages. Soft back.
Dimensions: Landscape 22 x 19.5cms.
Edition size: 200

Where’s my swell American dad?

Fond lament for wholesome notion of fatherhood
Screen prints

40 pages. Soft back.
Dimensions: Landscape, 16 x 8cms.
Edition size: 200