My Biography

Dr. Susan Connolly is a graduate of Limerick School of Art and Design, Degree in Fine Art-Painting. She holds an MFA from the University of Ulster and a first class honours MA, from NCAD, Dublin. She recently completed her Ph.D. 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).

Recent awards include; The Golden Foundation, New York (2017). Arts Funding, Kildare County Council; WARP artist residency, Belgium (2010); Travel and Training Award (2009); DCR Guesthouse Residency, Den Haag, Holland (2009)

Research

The area of investigation within my practice explores a method of hybrid contemporary painting. The work is concerned with an expanded sense of paints materiality and meaning but investigated with full acceptance and knowledge of the tradition of painting practices which have existed in a landscape of infinitely elastic production for quite some time.

By asking questions of painting the concern lies in creating a space for conversation within the possibilities of the medium, rather than a model or originality for producing painted objects anew. Absent-ness and object-ness become reoccurring themes within the visual outcomes, with paintings seemingly now more concerned with their presentation than their imaging.

Most of the recent work has looked at theories associated with slippage in intention, meaning and materials and how this causes surface tension and doubt with the resulting artworks, not quite paintings but also not identifiable as something else either. 

Teaching

Since 2006 Connolly has lectured in the Fine Art Department at Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT), she formerly lectured in the Painting Department at Ulster University (UU), 2017-2018,  Limerick School of Art and Design (LSAD), 2002-2003, and on the access programme in iadt, Dun Laoghaire 2006-2009. Visiting Artist/Lecturer University of Ulster, 2014/2015.

Connolly is an Assistant Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, UK. 

Professional Awards

2018               

Invited speaker, Riverbank Arts Centre, Kildare

2017  

Shortlisted Art Panel- Stage 3, Infrastructure, Fingal County Council Public Art Programme 2017-2021

Invited Speaker, Painting/Materiality, RHA School, Dublin

Invited artist response, IMMA Freud Project, Dublin

Invited Chair, Painting Now, VAI event, Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast

Art Grant Award, Kildare County Council

Short-listed artist, Suki Tea Prize, NI

Artist Residency, The Golden Foundation, New York

2016               

VAI Get Together, Invited Speaker, IMMA, Dublin

Invited Speaker, Slow Motion: A Painting Symposium, UU, Belfast

PhD conference 2016, awarded presentation of excellence award

Invited participant in a documentary about Contemporary Irish Painting, curated by James Merrigan and filmed/produced by Saskia Vermeulen

2015               

Artist Talk, LSAD

2015                

in-conversation with Dougal McKenzie, dlrLexicon

What is and What might be, artist talk and workshop

Invited Speaker, Artists present, University of Ulster, Belfast

2014                

Invited Speaker, The Place of Painting, Symposium, The Mac, Belfast

Artist Bursary Award, Kildare County Council

2013                

Conference paper, Doubt and Visual Representation, UCC, Cork

Kildare County Councils, Arts Bursary

2012                

Invited Speaker, PAINTTUBE, Symposium, NCAD, Dublin

2011                

Habitation, curator of exhibtions/project, Kildare County Council

Commission, St Mary’s Secondary School, Naas, Co. Kildare

Commission, St Franan’s Secondary School, Prosperous, Co.Kildare

2010                

WARP, Artist Residency, Belgium

2009                

Travel and Training Award, Arts Council of Ireland

DCR, Artist Residency, The Hague, Holland. June-July

2008                

New York Research Trip, May-Aug

2007                

Artist Panel, 2007-2008, IMMA

Percent for Art Commission, Scoil an Linbh Iosa, Prosperous, Co. Kildare

2006                

Artist in Residency, Driaocht, Dublin, June-Dec’06

Artist Bursary, Kildare County Council

2005                

Tyrone Guthrie residency, awarded from Kildare County Council

2004                

Awarded General Art Award, Arts Council of Northern Ireland

2003                

Irish Art Review, Most Promising Young Artist

2000                

Cill Rialaig Artist Residency, Kerry

1997                

Taylor Student Art Prize, RDS, Dublin

Publications

After an Act, Slavka Sverakova, June’18 https://slavkasverakova.wordpress.com/2018/06/14/after-an-act-golden-thread-gallery-belfast-26th-may-14th-july-2018/

Artist response, Freud Project, IMMA

VAI- Painting edition, Sept’17

RHA Annual Exhibition 2017: A big, noisy, good natured show, The Irish Times, May’17

Others, Other-d and Otherness, Response to a Request, online journal

Visual Arts Round up, The Irish Times, Aidan Dunne, July’16

VAN, curated by James Merrigan, Spring 2016

BAM, Berlinartmagazine

What is and What might be, http://showerofkunst.com/sok/2015/11/04/what-is-and-what-might-be/

Visual Arts Round up, Painters who break the rules, Aidan Dunne, The Irish Times, 05/05/15

http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/art-and-design/visual-art/visual-art-round-up-painters-who-break-the-rules-1.2193910

When the Ceiling Meets the Floor, Eoin Dara, http://www.susanconnolly.com/#!/text ,April 2015

Short texts…, Declan Long, June’15 https://declanlongtexts.wordpress.com/2015/06/06/short-texts-on-some-recent-shows-in-ireland/

The Dance, James Merrigan, Billion,, May’15 http://www.billionjournal.com/time/S.Connolly__G._Dunne_The_Lab.html

Susan Connolly at the Mac, by Declan Long, http://declanlongtexts.wordpress.com/2014/06/04/susan-connolly-at-the-mac-belfast/ , June 2014

Something about Some Thing to do with Paint, by Slavka Serakova, http://slavkasverakova.wordpress.com/2014/05/24/susan-connolly-something-about-some-things-to-do-with-paint/ , May 2014

The Irish Art Review, ‘Three Degrees of Painting’, by Carissa Farrell, Winter 2013

Subjects on a painter, Online Journal, http://www.subjectsofthepainter.blogspot.ie/

Studentszine.com, Issue 3, Open Submission Award, 2011

Connections, Sunday Irish Times, Culture Section, Cristin Leach, 1 May 2011

Expo 2010, China, feature artist

AIR- Artist in Residence, Someone’s Garden, Japan, Nov’09

Circa, http://www.recirca.com/articles/2008/texts/sc.shtml  Slavka SverakovaFeb’08

VAN, http://www.visualartists.ie/susanconnolly.pdf  May’07

Irish Times, ‘Crossing spaces and structures’, by Aidan Dunne, Feb’07

Irish Times, ‘Dreamers in difficult spaces’, by Aidan Dunne, Jan’06

EV+A 2003, catalogue for exhibition selected by Virginia Perez-Ratton

The Sunday Business Post, ‘Gambling on art’s young talent’, Mar’03