The Space We Occupy

George Bolster has exhibited in numerous museums and galleries in Europe, America, Korea, and Canada. His multidisciplinary work—through oppositional narratives—addresses ideas and belief systems from multiple perspectives. Focusing on 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. 

His select solo works include Tearing at the Fabric of Your Reality, Ulterior Gallery, NYC; You Are Made of Stardust, Solstice Arts Centre, Navan, Meath; Tatooine: Sci-Fi Becoming Fact, Sirius Arts Centre, Cork; and sociodesic: a space for the three great loves, Galway Art Centre (2010). Among his group exhibitions are Traveling to the End, MMCA, Seoul, Korea (2019); Music +Maker, Solstice Arts Centre, Navan (2019); and Making Contact: SETI Artists in Residence, New Museum Los Gatos, California, USA (2016).

Bolster is the recipient of several residencies including Centre Cultural Irlandais, Paris, France (2019); Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York, USA (2017); and the Robert Rauschenberg Residency, Captiva, Florida, USA (2013).

Ailbhe Ní Bhriain (b. Clare, 1978) works with film, photography, and installation to conjure scenarios of dreamlike hybridity. She received her MA from the Royal College of Art in London and was awarded a PhD by practice from Kingston University, UK. Her work has shown widely internationally, with exhibitions at RHA, Dublin; Broad Museum, Michigan; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Paris Photo; Hammer Museum, LA; and Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid, among others. Ní Bhriain is represented by Domobaal Gallery, London, and public collections of her work include Trinity College Dublin, Office of Public Works, Ireland, the Arts Council of Ireland, and Crawford Art Gallery, Cork. 

Neil Carroll is an artist based in Dublin, Ireland. He received his MFA from the Ruskin School of Art, Oxford University (June 2016) and his BFA from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin (2010), achieving distinction in both. In 2020, Carroll exhibited his first institutional solo show at the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) in Dublin, Ireland. He was awarded the Fire Station Sculpture Studio Award, Dublin, in 2019 and the IMMA 1000 Studio Residency Award (Irish Museum of Modern Art) in 2018. In 2017, Carroll was selected to exhibit as part of New Contemporaries in the UK, and in 2015 he was the recipient of a fellowship to the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine, USA. He has received artist's bursaries from the Arts Council of Ireland (2015, 2017, 2018, 2020) and his work forms part of both private and public art collections.

Colin Crotty lives and works in Dublin. He received an MA in fine art at Chelsea College of Art, London, and a BA honors in fine art at MTU Crawford College of Art & Design. His recent exhibitions include Biennial in Painting, Meštrović Pavilion, Zagreb, Croatia (2021); 100 Years of Change, the Glucksman Gallery, Cork, (2021); Moving Spaces, the Glucksman Gallery, Cork, (2020); RAUM Galerie, Dusseldorf, Germany (2019); Oonagh Young Gallery, Dublin (2018); Matthias Erntges Galerie, Düsseldorf, Germany (2017); Sirius Arts Centre, Cork (2016); DROP Beyond Boundaries, Goodman Arts Centre, Singapore (2017); PERIPHERIES: Soul-Beating, Co. Wexford (2017); and TULCA Festival of Visual Arts (2015). Recent awards include Art Council Bursary Award (2019), Culture Ireland Travel Award (2019), and RHA residency award, Dublin (2016). His public collections the include Arts Council of Ireland, Trinity College Dublin Art Collection, University College Cork Art Collection, and Office Public Works, Ireland.

Miranda Driscoll is the current visual arts curator-in-residence at Irish Arts Center in New York and the executive director of Solas Nua, Washington, D.C., and former director of Sirius Arts Centre in Cork from 2014-2019. She co-founded and directed the Joinery, a multidisciplinary organization in Dublin, from 2007-2014 and lectured on the BA (hons) photography program at IADT Dublin from 2011-2014. Recent key projects include the restoration of One, Here, Now—a large room installation by one of Ireland’s most important living artists, Brian O’Doherty / Patrick Ireland—at Sirius Arts Centre, Cork, marked by a year-long program of commissions from some of Ireland’s leading visual artists, composers, musicians and writers along with two international conferences and a book: One Here Now, the Brian O’Doherty / Patrick Ireland Project. Driscoll has an MA in Art in the Contemporary World from NCAD, Dublin, and a BA in photography from the Falmouth College of Art, Cornwall, UK.

Katie Holten is a visual artist and environmental activist based in New York City and Ardee. 

Holten grew up in Ireland and studied fine art and history of art at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, the Hochschule der Kunst in Berlin, and Cornell University in New York.

For over twenty years Katie Holten has made unconventional works, pushing the boundaries of ecological art. At the root of her practice is a commitment to study the inextricable relationship between humans and nature, between organic systems and human-made systems. Drawing is her primary research tool.

In 2003, Holten represented Ireland at the 50th Venice Biennale with a solo pavilion presentation entitled Laboratorio della Vigna. She has had solo museum exhibitions at the New Orleans Museum of Art (2012), Dublin City Gallery, the Hugh Lane in Dublin (2010), the Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York (2009), Villa Merkel in Esslingen (2008), Nevada Museum of Art in Reno (2008), and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2007). She has conceived major public commissions including TREE MUSEUM (2009-2010) for New York City’s Grand Concourse, commissioned by the NYC Parks Department, the Bronx Museum, and Wave Hill.

Fiona Kelly (b. 1985, Ireland) makes sculptural objects and printed matter with the aid of her foraged, ever-expanding archive of waste. This archive holds a compendium of debris; its natural and manmade constituents are altered and arranged to narrate human interactions with land and the relentlessness of time. She is currently the inaugural Artist in Residence at Gannon Eco, a waste repurposing plant in the Irish Midlands, funded by the Arts Council of Ireland (2021).

Kelly’s work has been most recently exhibited in New Perspectives. Acquisitions 2011-2020, National Gallery of Ireland; Overburden (solo), Triskel Arts Centre, Ireland; Land of Some Other Order, Lavit Gallery, Cork, Ireland; Visions of Half-Light, Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh, Ireland; Mouth of a Shark, Edinburgh Printmakers Gallery, Scotland, UK; Field Study, The Auxiliary, UK; The Dirt that Measures All Our Time (solo), Mermaid Arts Centre, Ireland; Sustainable Futures, Sirius Arts Centre, Ireland; The Great Heap (solo), Leitrim Sculpture Centre and The Luan Gallery, Ireland; and I Went to the Woods: The artist as wanderer, The Glucksman Gallery, Ireland.

Her recent notable accomplishments include the acquisition of her work by the Crawford Art Gallery for the National Collection of Ireland and appointment as Assistant Lecturer at MTU Crawford College of Art & Design. She is currently creating work for a solo exhibition at the Sirius Art Centre in 2022. 

Photo credit: John Beasley