Tamsin Snow

Tamsin Snow has recently graduated from a BA Fine Art & Critical Studies at Goldsmiths College ( University of London ), and lives and works in London . Her practice undertakes a questioning of the taxonomy of the art object in a museum context, which leads to a framing of the art object within an art-historical discourse that periodicises the object as belonging to a classificatory body of knowledge, a historicised past, or an archivable present. What can be termed as a culture of display is considered in her work through the fragment, and a methodology of assemblage, which allow for a critical engagement with the claims of art-historical lineage, with specific interest in the Baroque as a discursive field.

Snow thus questions the impact of museological methodologies on the political dimension of artwork and the dissemination of knowledge as a form of consumption or distraction. Sculptural environments consider the language of display, in a tension between the seduction of the commodity, the authority of art-historicity, and the critical potentiality of the art object.

Resident 14th November – 13th December 2008

Alice Maher

Alice Maher was educated at the University of Limerick and Crawford College of Art Cork, later receiving an MA in fine art from the University of Ulster, and, in 1987, a Fulbright Scholarship to San Francisco Art Institute. Her work involves many different media including painting, drawing, sculpture, print, photography and installation. She has exhibited widely in Ireland, England and the United States, and represented Ireland in the 22nd Sao Paolo Biennale.

In 2007 a large survey show of her work entitled Natural Artifice was held at the Brighton and Hove Museum. Also in that year she completed a major drawing installation The Night Garden for the RHA in Dublin. Orsola was an installation at the Oratorio di San Lodovico in Venice in 2006. The previous year she exhibited Rood at the Green on Red Gallery Dublin. Her Portraits were shown at the Purdy Hicks Gallery London in 2003. Gorget was the title of her exhibition at the David Nolan Gallery New York in 2000. Other solo shows include Knot at the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery Dublin in 1999, Swimmers at Le Credac Centre d’Art, Ivry-sur-Seine in 1996 and Familiar at the Douglas Hyde Gallery Dublin in 1994.

Resident 17th November – 15th December 2008

Linda Quinlan

Linda Quinlan (b.1977) lives and works in Dublin. Recent exhibitions include, L’Art en Europe, Domaine Pommery, Reims, Come Together, at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, (I Am Always Touched) By Your Presence, Dear, at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Like Horses and Fog, at the Crawford Gallery, Cork and An Other Place, at the Long Gallery, Tasmania. She was selected for The Advanced Course in Visual Arts at The Fondazione Ratti Museum, Como, with Yona Friedman. An exhibition of work accumulating from this programme will be presented at Careof Gallery, Milan.

In 2006 she was awarded the prestigious Allied Irish Bank Prize. This facilitated the first substantial publication on Quinlan’s work. It features an essay by Sally O’ Reilly, a short story by Cathal Coughlan and is accompanied by text by the artist. Many artworks have been created specifically for this publication. One such project includes contributions from Anna Barham (UK), David Joyce (IRL), Lorna McIntyre (UK), Giles Round (UK), and Lee Welch (IRL).

Her work is in the collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Irish Arts Council and several private collections.

“Her assemblages, created from both the found and the made object, are transitory, agreeing to collect themselves in this form for today but maybe not tomorrow. The elements dynamic internal relationship extends between objects within the gallery space itself, as Quinlan orchestrates their position as if composing a landscape whereby feature in relationship to feature creates a unique topography and from that ‘place’ meanings multiply.”
Patrick Murphy, Director, RHA

Resident 1st September – 22nd December 2008