March Exhibition Featuring New Work by PhD Students at Burren College of Art

A new exhibition, A Sisyphean Task, will showcase the work of four practice-based PhD students at the Burren College of Art. The exhibition will open on Thursday, 12 March from 5-7pm and run until 9 April, Monday to Saturday, 11am to 4pm.

Artistic Research is a core part of the academic programme at Burren College of Art. In its PhD programme, which is accredited by NUI Galway, students focus on a research topic which they explore through artistic practice in order to generate new knowledge. Research at the College represents a plurality of approaches to the artistic process, is interdisciplinary and often informed by collaboration across multiple fields.  

Conor McGrady, Burren College of Art Dean of Academic Affairs and curator of the exhibition, said: “Work in this exhibition highlights the interdisciplinary approach that PhD Students at Burren College of Art bring to investigating the world around them, and to contributing to how we understand and engage with it through the lens of contemporary art.”

The exhibition will feature the work of students Qi Chen, Tanya de Paor, Kelly Klaasmeyer and Robbie Lawrence and will investigate a range of chosen research topics.  

Qi Chen’s research focuses on the combination of portrait, text and documentary film to question or collapse subjective distance between people, with a view to enhancing mutual understanding. Qi has worked as a full-time artist in Hunan Painting Academy and Hunan Province Artists Association, and was the Director of the Young Artists Association of Hunan Province and had the honour of being part of the Great Wall Chinese Painting Distinguished Painters.

Tanya de Paor presents research from a series of intergenerational workshops that aim to co- create speculative, fabulated and playful stories about the Anthropocene. Tanya is an artist, researcher and lecturer based in Cork, and her work is concerned with exploring human/nature connections in the neo natural world of the Anthropocene. Her work is multidisciplinary including sculpture, drawing, installation, text and lens based media. Tanya recently presented at the TransCultural Exchange 2018, International Conference for Opportunities in the Arts, in Québec City. 

Kelly Klaasmeyer’s research enquires into the relationship between painting and story, exploring as to whether an expanded idea of the portrait can enhance our understanding of subjectivity. Her work is in public and private collections in the United States and private collections in Austria, Germany and The Netherlands. She worked as Arts Writer and Art Critic in St. Petersburg, Russia for the St. Petersburg Times and then in Houston, Texas for the Houston Press and various publications.  The editor of the online art magazine Glasstire from 2007 to 2013, Kelly was awarded a USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Fellowship as well as a Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for Short-Form Writing.

Robbie E. Lawrence’s research examines painting as a vehicle for understanding and ameliorating Thanatophobia (Existential Death Anxiety). Her practice revolves around observational painting and drawing techniques, using representation to investigate the psychology of the objects and people around her. These careful techniques are used to capture moments of storied depth and sensitivity to create quiet, contemplative spaces.   

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