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.

Dr. Ruby Wallis is a visual artist who works with photography and the moving image. Selected exhibitions include; The Lab,The Gallery of Photography, Belfast Exposed,The Dock, Vondelbunker- Amsterdam, Ormston House, TULCA, Perlman Teaching Museum, USA. Selected publications include The New Yorker magazine, British Journal of Photography, Winter Papers vol.6 and 7.Wallis is on the board of directors, Engage Art Studios, Galway. She is a recipient of a Visual Arts Bursary Award, 2017 and 2020 and Agility Award, 2021 from the Arts Council of Ireland. She was also awarded a residency by Centre Culturel Irlandais and Galway County Council, 2021. Upcoming group exhibitions include Opening the Gates, PhotoIreland Festival, 2022 and Bones in The Attic, The Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin.

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.

Born in Scotland and based in Galway since 2011, Marielle MacLeman’s work explores ideas of place and its material trace through drawing, painting, sculpture, site-specific installation, and participatory and collaborative approaches. Recent commissions include Dublin Art Book Fair 2022 for Temple Bar Studios and Gallery, a co-commission for Workhouse Union and VISUAL, Meta Dublin, University Hospital Waterford, University Hospital Galway, and a costume design for Elisabeth von Samsonow for Tulca Festival of Visual Arts 2021.

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.

Gordon is a leading expert in Irish heritage with an MSc in Environmental Science from Trinity College Dublin. He has a particular interest in the Burren, which he has researched extensively for many years and he is an authority who is regularly consulted and who leads field trips for students and visiting scholars.

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.

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.