Ursula Burke’s work explores abuses of power in the social and political realms of the West. Often, taking a Northern Irish context as a critical point of departure from which to generalise her approach to international concerns. Formally, her work appropriates tropes deeply invested in the classical and re-inserts them in the contemporary, aiming to create a conceptual bridge between the classical ‘ideal’ (in form/society) and the reality of contemporary, post-conflict, Northern Irish society.

The Precariat brings together a body of work that seeks to investigate the experience of insecurity, fast becoming a universal condition as we struggle to subsist in an impoverished and increasingly unstable civil society, in which personal solutions are prescribed to global problems.

12 September, 5.30pm: Exhibition walk through,Ursula Burke,The Precariat

Join our Exhibitions Curator, Ruth Carroll who will be facilitating a conversation in Gallery I with artist Ursula Burke and Prof. Colin Graham, Professor of English, Maynooth University. This lively and dynamic discussion will take in the artworks in the exhibition and the themes addressed therein, including the Northern Irish context, the role of art in the political sphere and power relations in society.

During March 2018 Ursula Burke won the Golden Fleece Award, the Visual Artists Ireland Suki Tea Award which grants her an artist residency at Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris and was also awarded a Windgate Craft Artists Fellowship at the Vermont Studio Centre, U.S.A. She undertook an artist residency and exhibition with the Mattress Factory Museum, Pittsburgh, Jan – April 2017 and was awarded the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, British School at Rome Fellowship in 2014. She is Joint Prize Winner of the Claremorris Open, Ireland 2015.

Her work is part of the collection of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the Ulster Museum Collection, Belfast, the Office of Public Works, Ireland, The Harbour Commission Northern Ireland and in private collections nationally and internationally.

www.ursulaburke.com