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About Sonia Shiel

Statement

Sonia Shiel is an Irish visual artist, based in Dublin. Her intricate paintings of the sublime reveal a shape-shifting landscape, in which near-sentient storms, cosmological, and unruly phenomena are the type of tangible things people might climb to, or tether. As installations, Shiel’s often free-standing paintings form traversable circuits, maintain a studied self-reflexivity, and consolidate performative installations that use audio-visual, prop, and text based elements to orientate the audience. On stepping in to one of Shiel’s narrative loops, the viewer too confronts the uncanny in a folie a deux - bound by physical circumstance and a narrative momentum, that thrashes through form and façade to explore creative agency, authenticity, and free-will. As well as being squared, stuffed, or framed, Sonia Shiel’s paintings have taken the shape of terrain, portal, pageant, puppet and prop. In her exhibitions, ‘landscape’ appears to possess 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, theater, mythology and literary fiction, Shiel’s works explore our capacity for self-determination, and often create dynamic opportunities for performance. 

Biography

Selected exhibitions include VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow; Kunstverein Aughrim, Wicklow; The Glucksman Gallery, Cork; the Crawford Gallery, Cork; The Cable Factory, Helsinki; Kuturbunker, Frankfurt; and The Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin. Her projects have occurred in collaboration with a number of academic institutions – The Art and Law Program at Fordham University in New York; The School of Drama, UCD, Dublin, and most recently with partnering institutions: Visual Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow and Kunstverein Aughrim, Wicklow. She has had a number of intensive cross-disciplinary collaborations with Chris Clarke, curator of the Glucksman Gallery, and writer, Cork; Benjamin Hanussek, game theorist, Warsaw; Anne Bogart, theatre director, NY; Elvia Wilk, writer, NY; Amie Egan, costume designer, Dublin, and a number of performers.

You are happy, you paint in the foreground - Adonis. You paint him moving away the bushes to reveal her. And his hair is also blowing in the wind. His right leg looks to be fading, and the brushstrokes are loose, and the colours are dark. His sandals are gold, the ones you wanted last summer. And… he has three hunting dogs, but you can't find room for the third, so you just indicate him, chi chi chi, and then cut off his head. And you stand back, and you realise you've left Cupid out altogether. Didn't cross your mind. So you make him really small, a baby.

- Like this. (artist demonstrates) The size of your finger.

Fat, so he is not confused with a bird. And he gets all the attention. And you never think about it again. Until one day you see loads of babies on the telly - babies selling countries, babies raping and boasting, babies in charge, babies of all ages, babies older than you, carrying arrows. And you have a colour in your hand, and it's yellow. And that's all you've got.

Excerpt Three Words, First Word, Round , by Sonia Shiel (for Void Gallery, Derry, curated by Mary Cremin)

Recent texts include The Geometry of Failure, by Shiela Armstrong; and ‘Zoom, or What we talk about when we don’t talk about love’ by Chris Clarke; among others. Shiel’s own performative texts include: Three Words, First Word, Round, and Place Your Finger, for Void Gallery, Derry; Rectangle Squared, for Crawford Art Gallery, Cork; and The Incomplete Platypus, for Rua Red, Dublin.

Recent

In Sonia Shiel’s exhibition, Medusa in Pieces, landscape appears to possess multi-dimensional capacity, including opportunities for transposition, restoration, disembodiment, and prediction. These landscape works share mobius-like qualities, appearing to have near continuous seams, symmetrical values, and 360-degree surfaces, and they generate foley and other sounds, featuring field recordings of birds, human voice, and wind - all of which defy their 2-dimensional origins. In adapting the myth of Medusa, a story of misrepresentation and disputed agency, the exhibition’s central looping narrative explores its own evolution,through a series of live technical performances, from disembodiment to full constitution. Curated by Benjamin Stafford.

The next live on-site Technical Performance is at 12 noon, 25th November 2023.

For details or to book see more at VISUAL, Centre for Contemporary Art and The George Bernard Shaw Theatre, Carlow.

Supernatural Bureau at Kunstverein Aughrim features a site-specific landscape painting, inside a hanging tray. It is both a screen, protecting an inner world, and a façade, projecting information. It is a topological enquiry and a pictorial representation of a multi-dimensional terrain. It sits aside a major new body of work by the artist Sonia Shiel, commissioned by VISUAL Carlow, for exhibition there from 30 September 2023 to January 21st. What we see at Kunstverein Aughrim is a reflection of Shiel’s working processes, and a portal into the sublime. Curated by Kate Strain.

For details or to book see more at Kunstverein Aughrim.

The Pulse Event Series takes its name from Elvia Wilk's analysis of Karen Russell's description of blossoming in The Bad Graft. Russell’s short story describes the relationship between the Joshua tree and the yucca moth as a metaphor for co-dependence between us and nature, and the couple at the centre of her story. Neither the moth nor the tree can survive without each other. Their relationship is consummated in a tremendous blossoming referred to by a local Mojave desert ranger as a “pulse event.” As a series of performances, devised by Sonia Shiel in collaboration with Kunstverein Aughrim, 3 Pulse Events generated opportunities for critique, and collaboration, to advance the narrative and performance elements of Shiel’s project exhibition Medusa in Pieces, at VISUAL, Centre for Contemporary Art. These events were generously supported by The Arts Council Project Award. Curated by Kate Strain.

Biography

In 2022, Sonia Shiel received a 3 year residency from TBGS, Dublin and has had recent solo exhibitions at the Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin; Kunstverein Aughrim, Wicklow ; and VISUAL, Carlow.

In 2021, she began collaborating with curator Kate Strain at the Aughrim Kunstverein on a R&D project for which she received a Project Award from The Arts Council. Recent solo exhibitions include: the Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin, 2021; Void, Derry, 2019; and the Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, 2017, with a monograph published by UCD and a series of live performance-based collaborations at UCD’s School of Drama; ArtBox; The Circe Pavillion; TBGS; and NCAD’s Gallery. In 2019, she was AIR at Rua Red and completed commissions for the DLR Municipal Collection, The Glucksman Gallery and Collection, and Facebook’s HQ. She is a founding member of Round Table and Vase - a dramaturgical workshop; and a member of The Justice-In-Fiction Forum, at UCD.

Other solo shows include major projects at The RHA Gallery, Dublin; Kulturbunker, Frankfurt; The Butler Gallery, Kilkenny; Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Dublin; The Cable Factory, Helsinki; The Galway Arts Centre; and Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris; and others. Recent group shows include the DLR Lexicon, Dublin; Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Dublin; Art Box, Dublin; The Glucksman Gallery, UCC, Cork; the ISCP, New York; Pallas Contemporary Projects and Periodical Review #7, Dublin; The Cable Factory, Helsinki; Rua Red, Dublin; Atelier, Frankfurt; Ormston House, Limerick; The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; The Glue Factory, Glasgow; and The Model, Sligo; among others.

She has been a recipient of the Tony O'Malley Award from the Butler Gallery and the Hennessy Craig Award from the RHA, and has received a number of Bursary and Project Awards from The Arts Council; as well as project funding from Culture Ireland; DLRCC; SDCC, and the DCC. Her work features in several international private and public collections, including the DLR Municipal; the Arts Council of Ireland; the City of Frankfurt; the Glucksman Gallery, Trinity College; and the Office of Public Works. She is represented by the Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin.

Residencies include the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 2015; and the ISCP, New York, 2014; Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, 2013; Ard Bia Berlin, 2012; a three year residency at Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Dublin, 2011 - during which time she was awarded exchange residencies at HIAP, Helsinki International Artist in Residence program; the City of Frankfurt Artist-in-Residence Exchange Program; and received the Arts Council’s Residency at The Banff Centre’s Leighton Artists Studios, Alberta, Canada.

She has produced several publications with various institutions: Rectangle Squared - a monograph of the artist’s stories and scripts, in association with UCD, Dublin and NCAD Gallery; More Rules Than Road, on the occasion of her solo exhibition at the RHA Galleries, 1 and 2, with texts written by Mark Hutchinson, Chris Fite Wassilik and Patrick Murphy, published by the RHA, Dublin; Babel’s Biting the Moon - produced by FOUR Gallery, Dublin and Roscommon Arts Centre, written by Charlotte Bonham-Carter, on the occasion of her joint exhibitions with them; and House Projects - a collaborative book celebrating a series of exhibitions in artist’s and curator's homes, with Shiel’s house text written by Dave Dyment of Mercer Union, Toronto, and supported by the Arts Council’s Project Award. Shiel’s upcoming publication celebrating Medusa in Pieces and her work with Kunstverein Aughrim and VISUAL, Carlow, will be launched as part of Dublin Art Book Fair at TBGS in 2024.

CV

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS AND PERFORMANCES

Medusa In Pieces, VISUAL, Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow 2023; Supernatural Bureau, Kunstverein Aughrim, Wicklow, curated by Kate Strain, 2022 - 2023; 6th Biennial of Painting, Zagreb, 2021. Curated by Gavin Murphy and Mark Cullen of Pallas Contemporary Projects. The Dangers of Happy, Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin, IRL, 2021; I Am What You've Come to See, VOID, Derry, UK, 2019. Curated by Mary Cremin; Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin, IRL, 2019. How The Oyster Makes the Pearl; VOID, Derry, UK, 2019. Three Words, First Word - Curated by Mary Cremin; The Observatory at UCD O'Kane Centre for Film Studies, Dublin, 2018. ‘Sideways Mary' with Round Table and Vase; VOID, Derry, UK, 2018. 'Dead Her,' Performance / The Winter Series, Curated by Mary Cremin; DLR Lexicon Gallery, Dublin, IRL, 2018. Sea Change, Curated by Oonagh Young; The Glucksman Gallery, UCC, Cork, 2018. Double Take, Curated by Chris Clarke and Fiona Kearney; The Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, IRL, 2017. 'Rectangle Squared,' Curated by Dawn Williams, with live opening performance; NCAD Gallery, Dublin, IRL, 2017. 'Rectangle Live,' Curated by Anne Kelly; Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin, IRL, 2017. Rectangle; Pallas Projects, Dublin, IRL, 2017. Periodical Review #7, Curated by PPS V RGKSKSR; Treeline Circe Pavilion, 2017. 'Selected Readings' Curated by Mary Cremin and Oonagh Young; The Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, IRL, 2017. Rectangle Squared, curated by Dawn Williams; Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Dublin, IRL, 2017. Rectangle, A written Thing at Art Book Fair; The Cable Factory, Helsinki FIN, 2016. 'Henrietta hyvä...' Curated by Nadja Quante; Art Box, Dublin, IRL, 2016. 'Pet Boy and the Bird's Dream - Prologue,' with Avocado Ensemble, live performance; Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin, IRL, 2015. 'Here, While the Bees are Sleeping; ISCP, New York, US, 2014. ‘Consent Volenti,' Curated by Kari Conte; Oonagh Young Gallery, Dublin, IRL, 2013. 'Misadventure Seeks Rainy Afternoon

SELECTED AWARDS AND RESIDENCIES

Arts Council Project Award 2023; and Arts Council Bursary Award 2022; Temple Bar Gallery and Studios Program 2022 – 2025; Rua Red Artist in Residence Studio Program, 2020-2022; The Arts Council Visual Art Project Award 2021; The Arts Council Visual Art Bursary Award, 2021; Meta / Facebook Artist in Residence Program, 2020, curated by Linda Shevlin and Josephine Kelleher; The Arts Council, Visual Art Bursary Award, 2020; SDCC Bursary, 2020; DCC Bursary Award, 2018; The Arts Council, Visual Art Bursary Award, 2018; The inaugural NCAD Gallery Incubation Residency Award, 2017; The Arts Council, Visual Art Bursary Award, 2017; DLRCC Bursary Award, 2017; DLR Event / Project Support Grant, 2017; UCD Artist in Residency Award 2016, for Arts and Humanities; The Arts Council, Visual Art Bursary Award, 2015; The Arts Council Project Award, 2014; ISCP, International Studio & Curatorial Program 2014, New York; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Artist in Residence Program 2014, Dublin; Art & Law Fellowship Program 2014, Fordham Law School, New York; The Arts Council, Visual Art Bursary Award, 2013; The Centre Culturel Irlandais AIR, 2013, Paris, France; Fire-Station Studios, Residency Award, 2012, Dublin; The Arts Council, Travel and Training Award, 2011, Paris; The Arts Council, Travel and Training Award 2011, Frankfurt; City of Frankfurt Artist in Residence, 2011; HIAP 2012, Helsinki; Culture Ireland Award, 2012; The Tony O’Malley Award, 2012, Butler Gallery; Ard Bia Berlin, 2012, Germany.

RESEARCH AND COLLABORATION

Medusa in Pieces VISUAL, Carlow, 2023; Pulse Events, Kunstverein Aughrim, 2023; Research and Development 2022, Kunstverein Aughrim, Ireland, with Curator Kate Strain; Production 2022, Temple Bar Gallery and Studios; Round Table and Vase, 2019; Void Gallery, Derry, 2019; UCD, Dublin, Ireland; Academic Forum - Justice-in-Fiction, UCD Dublin 2017; Parity Studios, UCD, 2016; Art Box, with Performance Ensemble Group - Avocado; Vera List Centre for Art and Politics, New York, with Art and Law Program, Fordham University, 2014.

BIOGRAPHY AND EDUCATION

Born in Ireland in 1975. Lives in Dublin. Trained in Dance at The Vaganova Academy, St. Petersburgh and Drama at Gaiety School of Acting, Dublin. Holds a BA in Fine Art, from NCAD, Dublin and an MA in Visual Art Practice, from IADT, Dublin. A Fellow of the Art and Law Program, New York, and the School of Drama at UCD, Dublin. An occasional visiting lecturer in third level universities and member of the Arts Council’s Artist in Prison project. Founder of Round Table and Vase - a dramaturgical and voice-based workshop for fellow artists involved in text-based pre-production. Work held in various private and public collections, including: the Arts Council of Ireland; The Glucksman Collection; Video Bureau, Beijing; Trinity College, Dublin; The City of Frankfurt; DLR Municipal Collection; the Office of Public Works; the CCI, Paris.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

‘The Geometry of Failure,’ Sheila Armstrong, for Medusa in Pieces, 2023; When We Don’t Talk About Love, Chris Clarke, for The Dangers of Happy, 2021; Henrietta hyvä...' by Nadja Quante, 2016 Helsinki; 
'Fieldworks', published by the Lewis Glucksman Gallery, 2014;
'Creative Ireland: Contemporary Visual Arts in Ireland' by Noel Kelly & Seán Kissane 2011;
‘Sonia Shiel - More Rules Than Road’, published by RHA, Dublin, with ‘Nobody’s Perfect’ text by Mark Hutchinson, and ‘A Resolute Vulnerability’ text by Chris Fite Wassilik 2011;
‘Sheltering Daydreams’ by Catherine Bernard, The Butler Gallery, Kilkenny, 2011; Babel’s Biting the Moon - produced by FOUR Gallery, Dublin and Roscommon Arts Centre, written by Charlotte Bonham-Carter, and ‘Handmade’ by Patrick Murphy, RHA, Director, 2011;
House Projects - ‘A Carpenters Omelette’ by Dave Dyment. Mercer Union, Toronto. 2011

TALKS AND SEMINARS

“Haptics – Expanded Painting Practices” TU Dublin, 2022; UCD’s School of Physics, “Neils Bohr’s Pataphysical influence on Art, Theatre and Law,” 2017 and 2019; “Neils Bohr’s Pataphysical influence on Art, Theatre and Law,” School of Linguistics at UCD, 2018; The Luan Gallery, Athlone, “The Arts Council Collection and its impact on artists”, with Eamonn Maxwell and Jesse Jones, 2018; UCD’s Department of English, Drama and Film, Seminar paper, “No Line at all - Dramaturgy; Installation and not seeing the proscenium” 2018; The Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, IRL. 'Rectangle Squared,' 2017
Irish Museum of Modern Art, Project Spaces, 'Noon,' artist’s talk, Dublin 2017; The Vera List Centre for Art and Politics, New York 2014 - Parse and Consent, New York 2014
Fordham University, History of Art - Artist Talk Series, New York 2014; The Art & Law Program, seminar paper - Parse, New York 2014; The Art & Law Program, seminar paper - Consent Volenti, New York 2014; National College of Art and Design, Artist talk, Dublin 2012; Centre Culturel Irlandais, Open Studio, Paris 2012; Frankfurter Kunstverein, Artists Talk, Frankfurt 2011; Helsinki International Artist Program, Public Residency Talks with Hubert Czerepok, Helsinki 2011;
Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Bran New Brains, Mark Hutchinson and Chris Fite Wassilak, Dublin 2011;
The Glucksman Gallery, UCC Artists talks series, Cork 2011

TEXTS

Upcoming Launch DABF, Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, 2024, VISUAL, Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow; Supernatural Bureau, 2023 (current,) Kunstverein Aughrim; I Am What You’ve Come to See, 2019, guide to an internal landscape, Void Gallery, Derry, UK, 2019; Rectangle Squared, 2017, in association with the NCAD Gallery, published by The Crawford Gallery, Cork, IRL; Rectangle – A written thing, 2016, stories and scripts, in association with UCD, Dublin.

‘Don’t write me only about your love. Don’t make wild scenes on the telephone. Don’t rant and rave. You’re managing to poison my days.’ the Viktor Shklovsky zoo anecdotes felt appropriate to the works, serendipitous in their affinity with Triolet’s criteria. Like the book, they skirt around the edges, alluding to particular scenarios and situations, inferring and insinuating without saying anything straight out. Are these titles propositions - when we are big, when we make plans, when we are hopeful - with the repetition of speculative imaginings recalling the sense of yearning, of promises held close, that runs through Zoo’s letters? They seem to forecast - and wish for - a shared future, an eventual reconciliation or reunion. 

Excerpt from Chris Clarke’s Zoom or What we talk about when we don’t talk about love