At Home With Irish Arts Center: A Brief History of Art and Radio Astronomy

Irish multidisciplinary artist George Bolster lives and works in NYC. He has exhibited in numerous museums and galleries in Europe, America, Korea and Canada. His work–through oppositional narratives–addresses ideas and belief systems from multiple perspectives. In films such as Un/natural History: Drowning Captiva (addressing climate change, rising sea levels and Rauschenberg's environmental legacy) and The Moon, McMoon’s, and the Moon Museum (which focuses on the first art object in space, and long-term cultural preservation and conservation in the face of environmental disintegration), he uses a combination of science, art history, and science fiction to examine our most prescient societal and species-wide challenges. Bolster is the recipient of residencies including: Centre Cultural Irlandais, Paris, France (2019); Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York, USA (2017); SETI Institute, Mountain View, California (2016-17); the Robert Rauschenberg Residency, Captiva, Florida, USA (2013); and the Firestation Residency, Dublin, Ireland (2012). Bolster has been awarded numerous grants from the Arts Council of Ireland, and Art Council of England.

Miranda Driscoll is an Irish senior arts manager and multidisciplinary cultural producer / curator, who is currently based between Vermont and Washington D.C. She was the Director of Sirius Arts Centre in Cobh, Co. Cork, Ireland, from 2014 to 2019. She co-founded and directed the Joinery; a not-for-profit multidisciplinary project space and studio in Dublin, which she ran from 2007 to 2014. She lectured on the photography program at IADT Dublin from 2011 to 2014. Miranda’s curatorial practice has an emphasis on the event, cross-disciplinary collaboration, improvisation, and community. Recent projects include the restoration of a large-scale, floor to ceiling, artwork of one of Ireland’s most important living artists—Brian O’Doherty / Patrick Ireland. This was marked by a year-long programme of commissioned works from visual artists, composers, musicians and writers and two international conferences.

Denise Markonish is the senior curator and director of exhibitions at MASS MoCA. Her exhibitions include Suffering from Realness; Trenton Doyle Hancock, Mind of the Mound: Critical Mass; Nick Cave: Until; Explode Every Day: An Inquiry into the Phenomena of Wonder; Teresita Fernández: As Above So Below; Oh, Canada; Nari Ward: Sub Mirage Lignum; These Days: Elegies for Modern Times; and Badlands: New Horizons in Landscape. She edited the books Teresita Fernández: Wayfinding (DelMonico/Prestel) and Wonder: 50 Years of RISD Glass, and co-edited Sol LeWitt: 100 Views (Yale University Press). Markonish has taught at Williams College and the Rhode Island School of Design, was a visiting curator at Artpace, San Antonio, Texas, and Haystack Mountain School of Craft, Deer Isle, Maine.