6pm, Friday 24 May
Lecture Theatre 

Ursula Burke's practice incorporates porcelain sculpture, soft sculpture, embroidery sculpture and drawing. Her work explores precarity in the social realm, power relations in the political arena and post-conflict histories relative to Northern Ireland.

Burke’s installation,  These Fragile Monuments, consists of a tapestry frieze investigating Irish historical, art historical and contemporary representations of guerrilla warfare inspired by the work of Norwegian tapestry artist Hannah Ryggen (1894-1970). Inviting Ukrainian weaver Zhanna Petrenko to weave the tapestry, Burke creates a thread between two countries and periods of time.  She  has also created a sculpture of a battle-bruised dog modelled on The Jennings Dog – a Greek bronze from the 2nd century CE – which is covered in hand embroidered flames emblematic of all the houses and commercial premises that were burnt out by the Black and Tans.

Ursula Burke will be in conversation with Dr Edwin Coomasaru, a historian of modern and contemporary British, Irish and Sri Lankan art; his research considers the politics of ‘gender, sexuality, and race. Coomasaru is an editor of the journal Visual Culture in Britain. 

URSULA BURKE: These Fragile Monuments (25 May – 21 July) is a BUILDING AS WITNESS artist project, supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media under the Decade of Centenaries Programme 2012 - 2023.

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