MFA Fine Art, Belfast. Call for Applications open for September 2024 start.

Images of MFA work above (clockwise) : Ronan Smyth, Krunal Gohil, Nollaig Molloy, Susan Hughes, Charys Wilson, Pamela Greene and Thomas McNeill.

MFA Fine Art, Belfast is a multi-disciplinary, studio-based programme.
Established in 1979, it has a proven track record of supporting the radical, alongside more traditional or orthodox practices. The course engagingly explores the enriching relationships between practice, research and theory – of creative thinking, making and doing in the contemporary world. It has a rich legacy of award winning graduates including, the Turner Prize, Bloomberg New Contemporary, the Paul Hamlyn, Derek Jarman and Nissan Art Award successes, as well as many other notable high achieving alumni.

The MFA offers close peer and staff engagement, with staff who are dedicated educators and highly active, award winning artists who are nationally and internationally recognised. The facilities (see below) are excellent and all MFA students have access to the school’s workshops and technical resources. The school also offers and encourages teaching experience and there are introductory pathways into teaching training where MFA students can undertake a post-graduate teaching award.

The MFA is extremely well networked into the local, national and international art scene, offering students many opportunities to professionally connect and feed into that network during and post studies. Many of our external activities develop through collaborations with external organisations such as the MAC, Catalyst Arts, QSS and Arts for All. This support network, along with affordable living costs and competitive course fees, makes Belfast a fantastic and viable place to further an emerging practice.

The initial application is online, then we invite relevant applicants to send a portfolio (usually digitally) for review and then we invite for interview (which can be online for non-local applicants).

More information about the MFA Fine Art course:
https://mfabelfast.wordpress.com

Contact:
Mary McIntyre: m.mcintyre2[at]ulster.ac.uk
Dan Shipsides: dj.shipsides[at]ulster.ac.uk

TERM STARTS September 2024.

APPLICATION DEADLINE: It is a rolling deadline process, which is open now.
However, we have a finite number of places and as we allocate places as we interview it is advisable to apply as soon as you are able and feel ready. Note: as a guide, February and early March is a critical period where we receive most applications.

MFA 2nd year: Virtual studio visits:
To get a sense of the student experience, here are some recent student interviews.
https://mfabelfast.wordpress.com/2021/04/21/mfa-2nd-year-virtual-studio-visits-on-youtube/

IMAGES:

MFA Studios:

Facilities: Metal and Wood Workshops / Print Workshop / Ceramics / Life Room / MFA Project Space

Images from MFA activities, talks and MFA exhibitions.

https://mfabelfast.wordpress.com

BSoA Artist’s Talk. Dr. Alessia Cargnelli. Wednesday 24th April, 1pm Conor Lecture Theatre. All Welcome!

“Taci anzi Parla” (Rome, July 1970 – Belfast, October 2019), dyptich, 2020. 

Dr Alessia Cargnelli (she/her, b. 1990 in Trieste, Italy) is a visual artist and researcher based in Belfast. Alessia is a former co-director of the artist-led initiative Catalyst Arts Gallery (2016-2018). She was 2020-21 Research Associate at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Derry. She completed a BFA with Hons in Visual and Performing Arts at IUAV University and a MA in Contemporary Art History at Ca’Foscari University in Venice, Italy. She obtained an Associate Fellowship Diploma with AFHEA at Ulster University in 2021 and she is currently completing her doctoral research at the Belfast School of Art on feminist-led women-artists’ advocacy groups connected with the island of Ireland in the late 80s and early 90s. In 2023, Alessia was appointed post-doctoral researcher-in-residency at the National Irish Visual Arts Library, based in NCAD, Dublin; with a pilot project focused on expanding underrepresented categories in the library’s collections – such as artists and designers which are coming from diverse ethnic/cultural/gender backgrounds and nationalities. 

With a background in artist moving image practice, subsequently informed by artist-led initiatives and collaborative productions, Alessia’s interests expand towards alternative forms of education, feminist-informed methodologies, collective self-organisations, activism, and artist moving image production and programming. Along with artist Emily McFarland, she is co-founder of Soft Fiction Projects (2018-ongoing), an artist-run initiative dedicated to producing digital and printed matter on artist moving image culture; focused on the exploring omitted voices, oppositional histories, geopolitical narratives underpinned by intersectional feminist perspectives which challenge and reframe dominant hegemonic power structures. Alessia is also a member of Array Collective, a Belfast-based group who, since 2016, creates collaborative actions in response to the socio-political issues affecting the north of Ireland. Array Collective was the winner of the 2021 Turner Prize, with the immersive installation The Druthaib’s Ball, which is now part of the Ulster Museum permanent collection. Array is featured in current exhibition at IMMA Self-Determination: A Global Perspective, with a newly commissioned body of works. 

REACH ’24 Festival event: Connecting with/as Nature. 11.30am. Sat 20th April, QUB. Exhibition and panel discussion led by Dan Shipsides, Amanda Slevin and Ruth Hunter.

Drawing workshop with Dan Shipsides / SECA events.

Connecting with/as Nature / 11.30am. Saturday 20th April
Canada Room & Council Chamber. QUB

Exhibition and Panel Discussion
led by Dan Shipsides, Amanda Slevin and Ruth Hunter

Join us for our exhibition where we will be showcasing drawings produced by participants in our ‘Connecting with /as Nature’ drawing workshops. Hear from experts on connective activities and the importance of engaging with (and as) nature for public and planetary health and wellbeing. Our speakers Dr Amanda Slevin, Dan Shipsides and Prof. Ruth Hunter will address:

the climate and socio-ecological crises, alienation from nature and the planetary emergency, health inequalities, the role of urban green and blue spaces for public health, and connecting with /as nature through art practices.

Wider info on the REACH ’24 festival: https://www.qub.ac.uk/about/sustainability/talks-conversations/

Queen’s University in collaboration with Sustainable Development Solutions Network Ireland is launching Reach ‘24, a new arts and sustainability festival. The festival aims to amplify climate issues and sustainability through the arts sector.

Trouble Brews: A Belfast Punk Compilation – public listening and discussion, 14th April, Oh Yeah. Belfast

BSoA Artist’s Talk. Moira McIver. Wednesday 10th April, 1pm Conor Lecture Theatre.All Welcome!

Strata/ Bogland, 2023, Digital scan.

Artist’s Talk Wednesday 10th April, 1pm Conor Lecture Theatre Moira McIver

Moira McIver works with photography, film, video and installation. Her projects are often based on the historical and the interplay between mainstream perspectives and individual experience and recollection. She researches first-hand accounts and popular local myths and stories to explore overlooked and under-represented viewpoints. McIver works across a range of digital and analogue lens-based media to explore how our sense of the physical remains vital to our perception and interpretation of history. In this talk she will discuss artwork based around migration of people from Donegal to Glasgow from the early 1900’s to the 1970’s. The artwork was developed as part of an artist’s residency at Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow in 2021 and was exhibited in Glasgow and Donegal in 2023.

More info: http://www.moiramciver.com/

Closing event: Niamh McCann ‘Someone decides, hawk or dove’. the MAC, Belfast 5th April – 7pm. 2024

To celebrate Niamh McCann’s exhibition, join us for a roundtable discussion exploring the complex, and complicated histories of objects, places and language as expressed through poetry, art, archives and lived experiences.

Using Niamh McCann’s exhibition as a stepping-off point, the discussion will explore historic legacies to speculate on what language, story, and imagery might be missing from accepted colonial narrative(s) or obstructed by its in-built global systems of naming, ownership, political power-play, and cultural displacement.

This evening will act as a reflection on the many iterations of ‘someone decides, hawk or dove’ which has been shown at the Rudolf-Scharpf-Galerie, Ludwigshafen, Germany (hosted by Wilhelm-Hack-Museum), at Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, StableArts, Washington DC (hosted by Solas Nua), and at The Battle of the Boyne Visitor Centre, Meath, Ireland.

‘someone decides, hawk or dove’ is a commissioned work by artist Niamh McCann as part of the programme for ART:2023, a Decade Of Centenaries supported by The Arts Council of Ireland/An Chomhairle Ealaíon and the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.

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Info and booking:
https://themaclive.com/event/closing-event-someone-decides-hawk-or-dove

Event speakers

Julie Morrissy

Julie Morrissy is an Irish poet, academic, critic, and activist. From 2021-2022 she was the first Poet-in-Residence at the National Library of Ireland. In her role she created and hosted the Radical! Women and the Irish Revolution podcast series. Her pamphlet of the same title is a collection of poetry, photographs, maps, translation, and research notes showcasing her work from the residency. It was published in July 2022, and is digitised in the permanent collection of the National Library of Ireland along with her papers. A complete, collaborative Irish translation of the pamphlet titled Radacach! Mná agus Réabhlóid na hÉireann was published in 2023. From 2021-22, Morrissy was concurrently a National Endowment of the Humanities fellow at the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies (University of Notre Dame), where she wrote a poetry-play. From 2019-2021, she was the inaugural John Pollard Newman Fellow in Creativity at University College Dublin (UCD). She is currently a Law & Poetry Fellow at UCD Sutherland School of Law.

Stephen Sexton

Poet and teacher Stephen Sexton was born in 1988 in Dundonald, outside of Belfast, Northern Ireland. Sexton attended Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University Belfast for his creative writing degree. After graduating, he continued at Queen’s for his PhD in creative writing. Oils, his debut pamphlet, was published in 2014 by the Emma Press and won the Poetry Book Society’s Winter Pamphlet Choice. In 2017, Sexton finished his PhD program and won the UK National Poetry Competition. The following year, he won an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors.

2019 saw the publication of Sexton’s first full-length, If All the World and Love Were Young (Penguin). A highly acclaimed collection, it won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the E. M. Forster Award, and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, and was shortlisted for both the Dylan Thomas Prize and the John Pollard Poetry Prize. It was also named a Book of the Year by the Sunday Times, New Statesman, and Telegraph. If All the World and Love Were Young addresses the death of Sexton’s mother in 2012 through the lens of the 1990 Super Nintendo game Super Mario World, taking its reader through each level of the game in an exploration of loss, memory, and the shape of reality.

His latest collection, Cheryl’s Destinies (Penguin, 2021)—a fantastical journey through real and imagined pasts—is shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection. A lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast, Sexton counts Anne Carson, Ciaran Carson, Sinéad Morrissey, and Sylvia Plath among his poetic influences. He currently lives in Derry.

Catriona Crowe

Catriona Crowe is former Head of Special Projects at the National Archives of Ireland. Reflecting on her 40 years of service she recalls

“When I started work in the 1970s, there was a pall of neglect and disappointment hanging over the institution, where bullet holes from 1922 were still visible in the walls, and sad boxes of burnt records awaited some technological miracle in the future which would allow them to be restored. Because of the “Great Calamity”, most people thought our history was gone and therefore it was pointless to invest in the place. My cohort of archivists was the first to be employed in decades. But as is so often the case, the accepted wisdom was untrue. The 19th century administrative archive of the state, from 1790 to 1922, remained intact due to bureaucratic inertia which kept it from being transferred to the Four Courts in time to be burned”.

Catriona regularly reviews for the Irish Times and presented the RTÉ documentaries Ireland before the Rising, and Life After the Rising. She is an Honorary President of the Irish Labour History Society, and a former President of the Women’s History Association of Ireland. She is in receipt of four honorary doctorates, from the University of Limerick, Maynooth University, Trinity College Dublin, and University College Dublin. She is a member of the Royal Irish Academy.

Catríona is a champion of public history in all its manifold forms; public history for her is about “engaging people of all ages and classes to reflect upon the past, to think about consequences for the present and, in some cases, to change public policy.”

Niamh McCann

Niamh McCann is a visual artist based in Dublin. Her work is a considered, individual voice in contemporary Irish art; effortlessly correlating strands of three-dimensional work, painting/drawing and installation. Unpredictable and frequently humorous, her approach often subverts, reimagines or playfully contests accepted narratives.

someone decides, hawk or dove is preceded by Hairline Crack [a dialogue] a solo exhibition in the Rudolf-Scharpf-Galerie, Wilhelm Hack Museum Germany and at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris. McCann is the inaugural recipient of the Norman Houston Commissioning Award 2022 from Solas Nua. The artist has previously received residency awards at Cemeti Arthouse, Indonesia; HIAP, International Artists’ Residency, Cable Factory, Helsinki, URRA Artist Residency, Argentina, and of Perspective and EV+A exhibition awards. McCann’s work is represented in the collections of Irish Museum of Modern Art; The Arts Council of Ireland, Limerick City Gallery, Swansea City Council; The London Institute; Hiscox, London and Dublin City Gallery the Hugh Lane.

Artist Talk: Susan Connolly. Wednesday 13th March 2024. BSoA Conor Lecture Theatre 1pm. All Welcome!

susan-connolly-talk-copyDownload

Dr. Susan Connolly is a graduate of Limerick School of Art and Design, with a Degree in Fine Art-Painting. She holds an MFA from the University of Ulster and a first class honours MA, from NCAD, Dublin. She completed her PhD at Ulster University having been awarded the VC Scholarship in 2014.Recent exhibitions include solo shows at Platform Arts, Belfast (2018), Ashford Gallery, RHA, Dublin (2017), dlrLexicon, DunLaoghaire, Dublin (2015), The Lab, Dublin (2015) and The Sunken Gallery, The MAC, Belfast (2014).Group exhibitions include After an Act, Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast (2018); Fully Awake, Glasgow, UK (2017); Veins, The Molesworth Gallery, Dublin (2016); What Is, and What Might be, Highlanes Gallery, Drogehda (2015); The Trouble with Painting,

The Pumphouse Gallery, London (2014); Persona, ArtBox, Dublin (2014), Essays for the House of Memory, Ormston House (2013), Limerick; Three Degrees of Painting, Solstice Arts Centre, Navan; Detonate, Limerick Arts, Limerick (2013). https://www.susanconnolly.com/

Belfast International Festival of Performance Art 2024. 19th to 22nd March

Event Details 

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Belfast International Festival of Performance Art 2024

Date: 19th – 22 Mar 2024

Event Details 

The 11th edition of the Belfast International Festival of Performance Art is generously supported by Ulster University, Bbeyond, and University of Atypical.

This year BIFPA 2024 marks 50 years of artist Joseph Beuys’s first lecture at the Belfast School of Art. The festival will take place across two venues as we celebrate the legacy of performance practice in the city; the Glass Box Gallery, Ulster University and University of Atypical. 2024 will also see a series of events across the year that celebrates 175 years of the Belfast School of Art. 

The BIFPA committee: Sandra Johnson, Siobhán Mullen, Zara Lyness, Thomas Wells, Sinéad O’Donnell, Brian Connolly and Brian Patterson.

 Featuring work by

Myriam Laplante (CA/ITL)	Martin O’Brien (UK)	Aisling O’Beirn (IRE)
Dougal McKenzie (SCO/NI)	Hiroki Doi (JPN)	Haru (JPN/IRE)
Alex Conway (IRE)	Day Magee (IRE)	Laura O’Connor (IRE)
Marina Iodice (POL)	Mousa AINana (SY)	Chloe Austin (IRE)
Hollie Miller (UK)                                  Zara Lyness (NI)	Craig Scott (UK) Rebecca Strain (IRE)	Elaine McGinn (NI) Gabija Jocyte (LTU/ NI)
Dearbhail McNulty (NI)	Sorcha Keeve (NI)	Charlotte Dixon (NI)
Siofra Minnis (IRE) Christina Lynn (NI) Moira Roulston (NI) Sara Monterio (PORT/NI)	Madison Agnew (NI) Christine Donaghy (NI) Aoife Hamil (NI) Anna Vidamour (NI)	Rachael Wood (UK) Cahal O’Connell (NI) Mark Cousins (NI) Foundation Studies Showcase

                                                                                                                                                                           In addition to performances held at the Belfast School of Art, the festival features an Artist Talk by Martin O’Brien, Workshop with Myriam Laplante + I-Project ‘Dome’ by Anann’s Arch.

Full programme details below and keep informed at facebook.com/BIFPA, instagram.com / bifpa_performance, as performance times can vary.

Tuesday 19th^h March

11am – 12 pm              Dougal McKenzie, “Abercrombie had a Zombie” – a painting-performance-film installation 

                                        Exhibition Project Space, Block BB, BB-07-002 (Students only)

2pm – 3pm                    Lens Seminar – Dougal McKenzie, Painting, Performance and Film, Block BB, BB-07-002 (SO)

2pm – 4pm                      Mark Cousins, Glass Box Gallery, Birley Building, Block BA

Wednesday 20^th March

10 am – 5 :30 pm           Myriam Laplante, ‘Student Workshop’, Block BB, BB-05-009 (SO)

1 pm – 2 pm                    Martin O’Brien, Fine Art Lecture, Conor Lecture Theatre, Birley Building, Block BA

5:30 pm – 7.30 pm          Mark Cousins, Glass Box Gallery, Birley Building, Block BA

Thursday 21^st March

10am – 12 pm                Laura O’Connor, Glass Box Gallery, Birley Building, Block BA

10 am ongoing              Moira Roulston, Performance to camera (screening) Foyer, Birley Building, Block BA

10 am ongoing               Foundation Studies Showcase (screening) Foyer, Birley Building, Block BA

12 pm – 2 pm                Mark Cousins, Glass Box Gallery, Birley Building, Block BA

2 pm – 2. 30 pm            Christine Donaghy, Link Bridge, 2^nd Floor, Block BB– Block BD

2.30 pm – 3 pm              Sara Montiero, Glass Box Gallery, Birley Building, Block BA

3 pm – 3.15 pm              Madison Agnew, Atrium, Birley Building, Block BA

3:15 pm – 3.35 pm         Siofra Minnis,, Glass Box Gallery, Birley Building, Block BA

3.35 pm – 3.45 pm          Sorcha Keeve, Atrium, Birley Building, Block BA

3.45 pm – 4.15 pm          Marina Iodice + Mousa AINana, Block BB, BB-05-009

4.30 pm – 5  pm              Elaine McGinn, The Foyer, Birley Building, Block BA

5.30 pm – 8.30 pm          Martin O’Brien, The Ledger Studio, University of Atypical

6pm – 6.30 pm               ‘DOME’, Anann’s Arch, Foyer, Birley Building, Block BA

6.45pm – 7.30 pm          Aisling O’Beirn, Conor Lecture Theatre, Birley Building, Block BA

7.30 pm – 8 pm               Alex Conway, Glass Box Gallery, Birley Building, Block BA

Friday 22^th March

10 am ongoing                 Moira Roulston, Performance to camera (screening) Foyer, Birley Building, Block BA

10 am ongoing                 Foundation Studies Showcase (screening) Foyer, Birley Building, Block BA

10 am – 12 pm                 Aoife Hamil, Atrium, Birley Building, Block BA

10 am – 10.30am           Anna Vidamour, Glass Box Gallery, Birley Building, Block BA

10.30 am -11 am              Dearbhail McNulty, Glass Box Gallery, Birley Building, Block BA

11 am – 11.:30 am           Rachael Wood, Glass Box Gallery, Birley Building, Block BA

12 pm – 2 pm                Mark Cousins, Glass Box Gallery, Birley Building, Block BA

1 pm – 1.40 pm                Christina Lynn, Foyer, Birley Building, Block BA

2 pm – 3 pm                     Gabija Jocyte, Glass Box Gallery, Birley Building, Block BA

2:30pm – 3.30 pm           Charlotte Dixon, Atrium, Birley Building, Block BA

3 pm – 3.45 pm               Chloe Austin, Glass Box Gallery, Birley Building, Block BA

4 pm – 5 pm                     Rebecca Strain, Glass Box Gallery, Birley Building, Block BA

5 pm – 5.30 pm               Zara Lyness, Foyer, Birley Building, Block BA

5.30 pm – 6 pm               Cahal O’Connell, Glass Box Gallery, Birley Building, Block BA

6 pm – 6.30 pm               Day Magee, Glass Box Gallery, Birley Building, Block BA

6.30 pm – 7 pm               Hiroki Doi + Haru, Atrium, Birley Building, Block BA

7pm – 8pm                   Hollie Miller + Craig Scott, Foyer, Birley Building, Block BA

7pm – 9pm                   Myriam Laplante, Atrium, Birley Building, Block BB

BIG GET TOGETHER from 9pm in DUKE OF YORK BAR      

At a Distance. Solo Exhibition by Nollaig Molloy (MFA 2020). QSS, Belfast Opens 7th March 2024.

‘at a distance’ at Queen Street Studios, Belfast on Thursday 7^th March 6.00pm to 8.30pm.

‘at a distance’ accumulates multiple spaces in which I have experienced and searched for, the cormorant. Merging cultural references, myth and scientific information, a film, of the same title, forms the centre of the exhibition. It visually combines real-time performance with life-size collages on an island habitat, alongside interactions with specimens from a Natural History archive and a selection of stop-motion animation using pop-up paper techniques. In its consideration of myth within cinematic language, the film incorporates digital and analogue effects to investigate how fact, fiction and observation offer strategies for identifying and speaking about our shifting relationship with the natural and mediated world.

This film forms part of an ongoing body of work in which I have been researching the many representations, symbols and decoys of the cormorant, a predominantly coastal bird. Through conversations with archivists, librarians, Liverpudlians, ornithologists, anglers and environmentalists, she explores this bird’s perceived and observed character.

Exhibition runs from 7^th to 28^th of March

Live performance: Saturday 23^rd of March at 1pm.

QSS Gallery opening hours: Monday to Thursday, 10.00am to 5.00pm

QSS Gallery One
2nd Floor
The Arches Centre
11-13 Bloomfield Avenue
Belfast
BT5 5AA

BLACKOUT. NUA COLLECTIVE at Platform Arts 7th March. Inc. Katrina Tracuma (MFA2021)

BLACKOUT exhibition by the NUA COLLECTIVE

Exhibiting in Platform Arts, Belfast, Northern Ireland
Connswater Shopping Centre, 17-18 Bloomfield Ave, Belfast BT5 5LP

Opening 7th March 2024 at 6pm (GMT)

Running until March 30th 2024
Open Wednesday to Saturdays from 11am to 4pm

Presenting the works of 13 Nua Collective artists, the Blackout series looks at climate change through a particular lens—blackout. Or the loss of self security that comes from our reliance on unreliable energy. The works wrestle with our human responses to the insecurity inflicted by the anthropomorphic blackout. This exhibition of lino prints that are unique and in their creation and processing have already travelled the globe.

This exhibition will feature our Blackout Documentary which will be screened at the space throughout the exhibition run. As well as several new exclusive artworks, in a variety of mediums and sizes, which extend the theme even further.

More info:https://nuacollective.ie

Artist Talk: Geraldine O’Neill. Wednesday 6th March 2024. BSoA Conor Lecture Theatre 12.45am. All Welcome!

Triceratops. Oil on Canvas. 120 x 100cm.

Artist Talk

Geraldine O’Neill

Wednesday 6th March 2024.
BSoA Conor Lecture Theatre 12.45am.
All Welcome!

Geraldine O’Neill (b1971) is one of Ireland’s most recognisable artists. She is a member of the RHA since (2013) Aosdána (2015) and the Artists Collective Shell/ter (S/TAC) which she co-founded in 2020. A graduate of NCAD, she completed her MFA in 2008. She has exhibited extensively in Ireland and abroad. 

Presently exhibiting The Sunset Belongs To You, a socially engaged portrait project with Mick O’Dea, The Model, Sligo, (2023-2024), The Ladder is always there, S/TAC with 10 emerging artists, Draíocht Arts Centre. (2023-2024). Upcoming exhibition In a Dream in a Happy House, with the S/TAC collective, Limerick City Gallery of Art (2024)

O’Neill’s work is collected by the country’s leading cultural institutions including The National Gallery of Ireland, Irish Museum of Modern Art, The Model, Sligo, Crawford Gallery, Cork, OPW and The Arts Council. 

More info: https://www.geraldineoneill.ie/