Temple Bar Gallery + Studios announces the recipient of the ISCP Residency 2024

Sonia Shiel will spend three months in residence at ISCP in Brooklyn, New York. This residency awards an artist with a high-quality studio; a travel, accommodation, and living stipend; in addition to studio visits and off-site trips to museums, galleries and other cultural organisations. It supports an artist at a pivotal point in their practice with significant experience on a programme designed to build international links through a growing network of artists and curators who are ISCP alumni.

Sonia Shiel’s paintings take the shape of terrain, portal, pageant, puppet, and prop. In her exhibitions, ‘landscapes’ appear to possess a multi-dimensional capacity that stretches not only painting’s materiality, but also its temporal, liminal, and spatial qualities. In these otherworldly domains, humans, animals, plants and gods co-exist mechanically with phenomena – transposition, restoration, disembodiment, prediction and other metaphysical states. Influenced by art history, theatre, mythology and literary fiction, Shiel’s work explores our capacity for self-determination, and often creates dynamic opportunities for performance.

Selected exhibitions include VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow (2023–24); Kunstverein Aughrim, Wicklow (2023); Void Gallery, Derry (2019); The Glucksman Gallery, Cork (2018); the Crawford Gallery, Cork (2017); The Cable Factory, Helsinki (2016); and The Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin (2024, 2021, 2019, 2017, 2015). Selected collaborative projects include Kunstverein Aughrim, Wicklow; The School of Drama, UCD, Dublin; The Art and Law Program at Fordham University in New York.

Image description: Two large free-standing paintings are at either end of a large gallery space. On the left, a pink and green, butterfly-shaped painting with a hinged open panel in its centre is painted with imagery of golden scales, white wing-shaped clouds, triangular teeth, foliage, and branches. On both sides, gloved hands emerge wearing elaborate yellow sleeves with yellow and black tassels. One arm holds a fan. In the foreground, a second circular-shaped painting is painted with a blue and green irregular pattern, bordered by the same motif in white and blue.