Lot 175 - Miriam De Búrca - Beautiful Apocalypse

ARTIST INFO

About 

Miriam de Búrca's earlier work engaged with personal experiences of persisting divisions in Northern Ireland. She experimented with film, video and installation and made drawings of weeds (‘Native Aliens’) that thrived on the ashes of bonfires and sites of dereliction following periods of conflict. Subsequently, she documented the constructed landscape of the Crom Estate, a former plantation to where she later moved. With Brexit in mind, she has been documenting plant life that grows directly on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, identifying them by their co-ordinates rather than botanical nomenclature. Recent work has focused on burial sites in Ireland called 'cillíní', which were used to bury unbaptised babies (until as recently as the 1980s) and many others considered ‘unsuitable’ for consecrated ground. She has also been adopting the ancient technique of 'verre églomisé' that involves the use of gold, to critique how the legacies of imperialism manifest today. De Búrca examines these phenomena through a post-colonial lens, mimicking imperialist methods and aesthetics that she feels at once attracted to and repelled by.  
 
Her drawing has recently been published in Phaidon’s series, Vitamin D3: Today’s Best in Contemporary Drawing and will be featured in Irish Art 1920–2020: Perspectives on a Century of Change, eds. Yvonne Scott and Catherine Marshall, 2022. 
 
Miriam de Búrca lives and works in Galway, Ireland. 

Education 

PhD in Fine Art, practice-based, University of Ulster Belfast, 2005- 2009 
Qualification: Doctor in Philosophy with Award of Excellence  
 
Masters in Fine Art, University of Ulster Belfast, 1998-2000 
Qualification 1st Class with Distinction  
 
BA (Hons) Degree in Fine Art, Glasgow School of Art, 1992-1996 
Qualification: 2.1 Honours Degree for studio work 
1st Class Distinction in Historical & Critical Studies  
 

Select Exhibitions/Awards 

Pending - Portraits of People and Place, Cristea Roberts Gallery, London, 2022 
Pending - RHA Annual, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, 2022 
Parklife: Biodiversity in Contemp. Irish Art, Glucksman Gallery, Cork, 2022 
EXPO Chicago, Navy Pier, Chicago, US, 2022 
TULCA Festival 2021, Galway Arts Centre, Galway, 2021 
Drawing Biennial 2021, The Drawing Room, London, 2021 
Moving Spaces, group show, Glucksman Gallery, Cork, 2019 -2020 
Radical Drawing, group show, Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry, 2019 -2020 
Fragile Earth: Seeds, Weeds, Plastic Crust, MIMA, Middlesbrough, 2019  
Protest and Remembrance, group show, Cristea Roberts Gallery, London, 2019 
Vanishing Futures, group show, Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast, 2015 
Drawn to the Real, group show, Cristea Roberts Gallery, London, 2014 
 
Recent Awards: 
Arts Council of Ireland Agility Award 2021 
Arts Council of Ireland Visual Arts Bursary 2021 
Arts Council of Ireland Bursary Award 2018 
Arts Council Research Grant 2012 
 

Gallery Representation 

Cristea Roberts Gallery 

Statement about AOAP Submitted Artwork   

Sentinel' - a dead dragon fly with broken wings. The title refers to the mass-decline of insects globally, something that will ultimately lead to our decline also.  
'Beautiful Apocalypse' - references the sublime and terrible beauty of a sea storm, a reminder of our fragility in the face of nature's power.  
'Cillín on a Golf Course' - a burial site of unbaptised children that is now part of a local golf course; players oblivious to the legacy they are trampling on when they go to recover their golf balls.