The Burren Annual Exhibition 2024 features Scottish artist Keith McIntyre, who explores coastal geological phenomena through mural scale drawing, print, performance and film.

Mullach Mòr – translated from Irish Gaelic means ‘the big rock’. In Scots Gaelic a similar word Moladh translates as ‘in praise of’ and prefixes the place or person to be eulogised in a poem or song. In Manx Gaelic the word is Mollyee.

“Big rocks have an impact on our lives and communities often becoming immortalised into legend and folklore.  Deep time geology, mimetoliths and our cultural heritage are symbiotically linked with a sense of place.” (Keith McIntyre)

In his first solo exhibition in Ireland McIntyre continues his interest in geology that has developed a significant cultural presence in the landscape through a collective community imagining.  Work presented will include the Elephant Rocks from Northumbria, the Vestmannaevjar Islands in Iceland and the Drinking Dragon from the Isle of Man. 

Keith McIntyre lives and works on the small Island of Berneray in the Outer Hebrides. The exhibition will coincide with a research visit to develop a new project specific to the Burren area thus extending the Moladh/Mollyee/Mullach connected theme between the human and physical geography of our northern and Atlantic coastlines.

The exhibition will include ‘Mollyee Yn Burro’ a film collaboration with Andy Mackinnon at Uist Film, commissioned for the Isle of Man Arts Festival.

Keith McIntyre was born in Edinburgh and studied Drawing and Painting at DJCA, Dundee. As a student he won the RSA Sir William Gillies and RSA Carnegie Award. He also received an Elizabeth Greenshields Award to study with Laurence Barker at the Barcelona Paper Studio. As Robert Clarke wrote in the Guardian ““McIntyre’s work embraces drawing, painting, performance, photography, all orchestrated into a collage in which an irreverent and impish dadaist battiness disguises concerns with existential disillusionment and social alienation”.

He has had numerous solo exhibitions going back to the 369 in Edinburgh; Tramway Glasgow at the opening of Glasgow 1990 European City of Culture, Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery, MIMA in Middlesbrough; RAAB Galerie in Berlin + London; Christian Dam in Copenhagen and Galerie Habana in Cuba. Group exhibitions include the ‘Vigorous Imagination’ Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art; ‘Premio Marco’ Monterray Museum of Modern Art in Mexico; ‘The Lion Rampant’ in Artspace San Francisco; ‘Divers Memories’ in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford; and ‘Turningpoint’ in the Sayle Gallery Isle of Man with Mark Wallinger and Kevin Atherton. 

His drawings, paintings and prints are represented in numerous public and private collections including the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, the Contemporary Art Society, the Campbeltown Museum of Modern Art in Sydney Australia and the Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, and Aberdeen city museum and gallery collections.

He also has a considerable profile as an artist working in theatre, performing arts + film projects including ‘Jock Tamsons Bairns’ at the Tramway, Glasgow and the ‘Legend of St Julian’ at the Traverse, Edinburgh with Gerry Mulgrew and Communicado. ‘The Unconquered’, an award winning production with Stellar Quines went on to present Scotland at the ‘Brits-Off Broadway Festival’ in New York. His ‘New Constellations’ drawing and performance installation at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art was the first co-commission with SAGE Gateshead. He was also commissioned to create the ‘Lockerbie Requiem’ for the Edinburgh International Festival. Film-work includes ‘Walk Me Home’ with John Berger and Timothy Neat. Drawing is central to his practice and he is a winner of the Scottish Open Drawing Prize.

After 10 years of teaching at the Glasgow School of Art McIntyre moved to Newcastle to take up an appointment at Northumbria University where he was a Professor of Fine Art and Head of Department of the Department of Arts. Key achievements in Newcastle include establishing  GSN – Graduate Studio Northumbria and the BALTIC 39 Studios. He is a Founder member of Northern Print Studio and was lead on the development of the WOON Foundation Prize, the largest award in the UK for graduating Fine Art students.

More recently McIntyre was Director of the Centre for Island Creativity at the UHI – University of the Highlands and Islands and now holds the position of Professor Emeritus. He was also Chair and a Trustee of Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum and Art Centre in North Uist. McIntyre lives and works in a restored Telford Parliamentary Church on the Isle of Berneray in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. The restoration project in collaboration with the architect Derek Patience won an RIAS award in 2013. He was elected to the Royal Scottish Academy in 2018.

The Burren Annual Exhibition brings Irish and international artists working with diverse modes of practice to the Burren to engage local and visiting audiences.  Inaugurated in 2004 it foregrounds Burren College of Art as a site for discourse and artistic engagement and prioritises the rural as a hub for building local and international creative networks.

The Burren Annual is supported by funding from the Arts Office at Clare County Council. Keith McIntyre’s work is supported by a Research Grant from the Royal Scottish Academy.