Photo by William Croall Photography
BIO
Fiona Byrne is an Irish artist, educator and writer. She trained at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin and has a joint degree in glass and visual culture. She has been awarded funding from the Arts Council of Ireland, the Thomas Dammann Junior Memorial Trust Awards and BLICKE Kultur Stadt Bern. She has exhibited internationally including showing her work in Ireland, Switzerland, Italy, France and the UK.
In addition to her artistic practice, she has worked extensively in the arts education sector. She has organised and led many exhibitions, events and workshops centred on the themes of engagement and process; examining the role of making in our society.
STATMENT
Fiona Byrne is an artist focused on how a greater connection with making, materials and things can reshape how we interact with the world. She works through objects to explore how we create and store knowledge. Her work delves into the concept of intelligence as an ecosystem which encompasses human and non-human nature. This idea expands intelligence not just to plants and creatures, but also to things. As humans we continually make and re make our world and are in turn, shaped by these manifestations.
Situated at the intersection of embodied intelligence, knowledge transfer, and connection to the more-than-human world, her work challenges conventional notions of intelligence and encourages alternative ways of interacting with knowledge. Believing that intelligence is active, through the act of slow making, she translates embodied knowledge into artefacts.
Her personal connection with material and skills is hugely important. It feeds into the concepts behind her practice. The direct interaction with the making process embeds these objects with a residue, a memory of the knowledge and skills that led to their creation.
These meditative forms serve as an invitation to reestablish lost connections with how we navigate the world. The art object acting as a portal to another location or position, allowing the observer to see the world differently.