Faculty & Graduate Mentors

Conor McGrady is an artist from N. Ireland whose work examines the relationship between ideology and the politics of spatial control. Primarily executed in black and white, his often large-scale paintings and drawings explore various manifestations of social order and raise questions relating to the control of space, personal and national boundaries.

Dr Áine Phillips is a visual artist, writer curator and academic based in Galway city. She has been exhibiting, publishing and performing in Ireland and internationally since the late 80’s. Her work is socially engaged and she has created installations and live performance work for multiple contexts; Biennales, public art commissions, public space, social events, galleries, theatres and museums. Digital films of her performances have been screened at film festivals, galleries and museums all over the world. Her work has been supported and collected by the Arts Council of Ireland and the National Museum of Ireland.

Ruby Wallis is a visual artist working primarily with photography, installation, and film. Her work engages with a haptic approach – using the close-up and psychogeography to work with embodied experience in relation to place and gender.

Eileen Hutton is a visual artist whose practice aims to generate reciprocal relationships with the more than human world and in the process create replicable models for informed ecological actions.

Tom Flanagan is an artist, filmmaker based in Galway. His solo and collaborative work with artist Megs Morley is an ongoing investigation of the language of cinema and its relationship to political power and collective memory. Flanagans’ moving image and photographic works examine real and imagined politically complex sites and forgotten histories and attempts to intervene into collective understandings of the present, by exploring the space between images, memory, knowledge, and power. Flanagans’ practice has been supported by numerous arts council bursary and project awards and forms part of the Irish arts councils national collection.

Frank Golden was born in Dublin and has been living in the Burren for almost thirty years. His publications include the poetry collections; ‘gotta get a message to you (Salmon Publications) “In Daily Accord” (Salmon Publications), “The Interior Act” (Salmon Publications), “On Route To Leameneh” (Raven Arts Press), “In Partial Settlement” (Wiffle Press), and two novels, “The Two Women Of Aganatz” (Wolfhound Press) and ‘The Night Game’ (Salmon Fiction). He has written two screenplays WHERE TWO ROADS MEET, and THE CALLER both of which received Arts Council and Film Board funding.

Tamaru Hunt-Joshi completed her PhD in Ecology in the Departments of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Department of Entomology at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Her scientific background focused mainly on Plant Ecology and Entomology with her PhD research investigating the influence of root and leaf feeding herbivorous, biological control insects on a species of European wetland plant (purple loosestrife) that are invasive to North American wetlands.

Kate Lavender-Duncan brings a wealth of experience and passion for the Burren to her role as the new lead for the Irish Studies course at the Burren College of Art. With a background in geology, archaeology, education and conservation, Kate has been intricately involved with the local landscape charity Burrenbeo Trust for over a decade. Her work there included introducing people of all ages to the Burren, designing and delivering comprehensive education programs from primary to tertiary levels, managing outreach activities, and leading the Burrenbeo Conservation Volunteers (BCV).

Selma Makela is a visual artist of Turkish Cypriot and Finnish descent, born in London and based in County Galway, Ireland.

Peter Power is Associate Professor, Chair, in Printmedia at School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

David is Professor and Head of Programme, Painting in the School of Fine Art at the Royal College of Art, London.

Nigel Rolfe is recognized as a seminal figure in performance art, in its history and among current world practitioners.

Cathy Fitzgerald, PhD, is a New Zealander, eco-social artist, researcher and educator now living in Ireland, the home of her ancestors. She is passionate that ecoliteracy be an essential teaching to all art students, advocating what Joseph Beuys argued many decades ago, that ecoliteracy is essential for expanded ecological citizenship – the necessity to live well with the Earth and all its inhabitants. A founder of the online HAUMEA.ie ECOVERSITY, Cathy is a popular speaker on ecological art practice, ecoliteracy and an accredited ESD-transformative learning & Earth Charter educator.

Alexei Monroe is a London-based, non-aligned cultural theorist and writer. His book on Laibach and NSK has been published in Slovenia, America, France and Germany. In 2010 he co-organised and moderated an international 3-day symposium on the work of Laibach and NSK as part of Laibach’s 30th anniversary event, Red Districts, Black Cross. In October 2010 he was programme director of the First NSK Citizens’ Congress held in Berlin and edited the Congress book, State of Emergence. He was co-editor of Total State Machine (PC Press 2015), a major publication on the British industrial group, Test Dept. He writes on and reviews a wide range of electronic music. He was a member of the organising committee of the 2nd NSK State Folk Art Biennale held in Ireland in June 2016. In November 2016 his book, Autopsia Thanatopolis, on the Czech-based multimedia art group, was published by Divus. He is currently researching issues around the cultural reception of Brutalism and was a keynote speaker at the Nonument! architectural symposium held in Ljubljana in February 2018. Other current research interests include German techno, Kraftwerk, the connections between industrial music and British science fiction and the history of the Stag as a symbol. He runs the electronic music label VEB89 and is also active as a DJ.

Jennifer Cunningham is a visual artist who works in a wide range of media including paint, printmaking, drawing, model making, film and digital media. Her work is quite figurative in nature and life drawing is an essential part of her practice.