URSULA BURKE

 

Ursula Burke is an Irish artist who works in a variety of media including Porcelain Sculpture, Embroidery Sculpture, Soft Sculpture and Drawing. Burke's work explores abuses of power in many realms of the social and political in the West. Often, taking a Northern Irish context as a critical point of departure from which to generalize her approach outwards 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 Irish society. 

 

She was recently awarded a Markievicz Award from the Arts Council of Ireland and the Decade of Centenaries, Department of Arts and Culture. Her work is part of the Narrow Gate of the Here and Now, Protest and Conflict Chapter at the Irish Museum of Modern Art 2022. From November 2021 to January 2022, she had a major solo exhibition with Visual, Carlow in Ireland called Supplicants. In May 2021 she took part in the Drawing Biennial curated by Drawing Room London. She had a solo exhibition at the Ulster Museum, Belfast titled A False Dawn in 2020. She undertook an artist residency at Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris and a solo exhibition also titled A False Dawn in September 2019. She is a winner of the Golden Fleece Award and the Visual Artists Ireland Suki Tea Award - March 2018. She undertook an artist residency and group exhibition titled So It Is 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. Solo Exhibitions include The Precariat, The RHA Gallery, Dublin 2018; The Precariat, The Dock Arts Centre, Leitrim; Solo representation at Supermarket Art Fair Stockholm by Ormston House Limerick, March 2017; ‘Vestiges’ at Ormston House, Limerick September 2016 & ‘Vestige’ at the Oonagh Young Gallery, Dublin, during May 2016. She undertook a major solo exhibition titled ‘Hope for a Better Past’ with the MAC Belfast, 2013 and worked with the National Portrait Gallery London on ’National Memories local Stories’ project during the same year. She is an Associate Academician of the Royal Ulster Academy, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

 

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