CLASS OF 2024
FINE ART
SCULPTURE | LENS | CERAMICS
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the lecturers who helped us get here
David Granville
Dr Aisling O’Beirn
Dr Adriana Ionascu
Dr Cherie Driver
Dr Christopher McHugh
Dr Duncan Ross
Dr Joseph McBrinn
Dr Suzanna Chan
Moira McLver
Ralf Sander
Sandra Johnson
Siobhan Mullen
Shirley MacWilliam
Stephanie Harper
Along with the amazing technicians, assistants, advisors & helpers who helped make our show a reality
Alan Watkins
Anya Nicholl
Austyn Finnegan
David McComiskey
Jim Maginn
Nora
Ruaidhri Lennon
Tadhg Flynn
Tara Dixon
From The Class Of 2024 We Would Like To Say A Massive
THANK YOU
CLASSOF2024
FINE ART
SCULPTURE | LENS | CERAMICS
A Celebration of Creativity and Achievement
A Celebration of Creativity and Achievement
2024 GRADUATES
Aoife Hamill
Brenda Morgan
Cahal O'Connell
Christina Lynn
Dearbhail McNulty
Ellie Mullan
Gabija Jocyte
Joe Cloughley
Joelene McAllister
Luke Steele
Mark Cousins
Moira Roulston
Molly Weavers-Hamilton
Nicola Murray
Rachael Wood
Sonia Reid
Aoife Hamill
VISUAL ARTIST
Email: aoifehamill.art@gmail.com Instagram: @aoife.art (She/Her)
A Celebration of Creativity and Achievement
Aoife is an artist looking to free herself and others from the pressures of perfection and value around artmaking. Both with artists and people who don’t identify themselves as artists. Her current focus is on interactive collaborative performances, derived from her own curiosity and pure joy in materiality, to create a communal drawing. Freedom and play are an essential aspect of child development, but these qualities are often forgotten in adulthood, where perfectionism can stifle creativity. Aoife believes that art and making art is an innate, essential part of the human experience.
Photo courtesy of Sandra Johnston BIFPA 2024
A Celebration of Creativity and Achievement
Brenda Morgan
CERAMIST
Phone: 07542067382 (She/Her)
Email: brendamorganartist@gmail.com
I am a ceramic artist working in Belfast and along the coastline of Lecale in Co. Down. I make large coil built and slab-built stoneware pots, honouring the natural and beautiful, the stark and ancient forms of the Earth, the sand, the rocks, the trees. Inspired by Jomon ceramics (ca. 10500ca.300 B.C) the Era of Japanese pottery characterized by flamboyant rope-like patterns and stylized figures, and Ruth Duckworths ‘Earth, Water, Sky’ Mural of 1969, depicting natural geological forms, my aim is to create work that instils a desire to reconnect with nature and forge a more sustainable planet.
A Celebration of Creativity and Achievement
Cahal 0'Connell/ MissMary Jane
VISUAL ARTIST
(He/Him/She/Her)
Email: missmaryjane09072000@gmail.co.uk
Instagram: @maryjane.miss
Facebook: Miss Mary Jane
YouTube: @missmaryjane148 | Miss Mary Jane
As a practicing visual artist, musician and cabaret performer, I am currently exploring the intersection of identity, gender, sexuality and visual iconography through my work. Utilising a secondary lens based medium through which I can visually communicate through, whilst capturing my primary practice rooted within performance. At the core of my artistic practice is a deep connection to sexual expression, and the utilisation of my personal drag alias as an artform, which serves as a constant source of creative inspiration and outlet for me. As a female presenting drag performer and a gay man, I am fascinated by the complexities that exist within contemporary society regarding sexual expression and identity.
A Celebration of Creativity and Achievement
Christina Lynn
VISUAL ARTIST
Instagram: @christinalynn art (She/Her)
Email: christinavisualartist@gmail.com
I work with film, photography and performance art. I take inspiration and vision from my own life experiences, and express and document my understandings and emotional responses through my art practice. My current work attempts to showcase the healing journey of complex PTSD and disassociation, along with the range of emotions, confrontations and conflictions within it. Rather than focusing on the negative, I aim to convey how mental-health issues can be overcome, through the confronting of the past and the embracing of the journey. My aim is to disrupt narratives and give hope and insight into these issues.
A Celebration of Creativity and Achievement
Dearbhail McNulty
VISUAL ARTIST
(She/Her)
Website: dearbhailmcnulty.co.uk
Email: dearbhailmcnulty@live.com
Instagram: @dearbhaildesigns
Dearbhail McNulty is a visual artist, feminist and activist from the North of Ireland. Her art is often politically driven and discusses local issues which are important to her. Her previous work has covered a broad range of topics, from the climate crisis; to marriage equality and ending gender-based violence. Her current project ‘Safe Place To Rest Your Head’, explores the concept of safe spaces by utilising light as a medium of communication, fostering a nostalgic ambience that mirrors the sense of safety often associated with the confines of one's home.
A Celebration of Creativity and Achievement
Ellie Mullan
CERAMIST
(She/Her)
Instagram: @elliemceramics
My collection of ceramic sculptures serves as a heartfelt exploration of my sister's pregnancy, capturing the beauty of growth and transformation. Inspired by her experiences, I created plaster casts, each representing a different stage of pregnancy. These casts served as the basis for my work, reflecting the contrast from fragility to resilience.
My art is a narrative of growth, from the delicate impressions against the bump to the permanent essence of my ceramic sculptures. Permanence is further captured and symbolised using bronze/copper glazes, with a hint of jade coming through, touching on the purity of new life.
A Celebration of Creativity and Achievement
Gabija Jocyte
FINE ARTIST
(She/Her)
Website: gabijajocyte.co.uk
Instagram: @gabi.j.art
Email: gabijajocyte@gmail.com
My practice explores girlhood in relation to voyeurism, performativity and the relationship between a viewer and an exhibited object.
Combining elements of sculpture, ceramics, lens-based work and performance, this manifests itself through installation work, a continuous attempt at creating immersive spaces of which the viewer can become a part. With the persistent surveillance we are all under, my aim is to question the viewer’s shame or otherwise, interest for voyeuristic and violent imagery, while drawing a heightened sense to the subconscious act of performing for oneself and others.
Image by Aidan O'Neill I am so tired, 2024, BIFPA, Glass Box Gallery, Ulster University, Belfast.
A Celebration of Creativity and Achievement
Joe Cloughley
VISUAL ARTIST
Instagram: @yo yo joe joe (He/Him)
Email: cloughleyjoe5@gmail.com
Joe Cloughley is a multidisciplinary artist, specializing in digital programs such as After Effects and Blender. His work is based around the character Skellyoz, a character that can fluidly move through cyberspace, a representation for our dystopian relationship with technology. Joe brings people together using audio visual installations, blending psychedelic visuals with hard techno and glitch art to suck the viewer into a dreamlike world. Allowing for a moment where the viewer can fore go technology and be present in the space.
A Celebration of Creativity and Achievement
Joelene McAllister
CERAMIST
Instagram: @joelene.art
Email: joelene.art@gmail.com (She/Her)
My current work focuses on the intersection of colour, culture, and blindness. To better understand how blind individuals perceive, learn, and experience colour, I have been using sound through water as a means of creating images. By adding ink to the water and capturing the resulting vibrations through prints.
The prints are transferred onto porcelain using textured prints and plaster batts. This method of creating images using sound waves and vibrations is known as cymatics, which typically involves high-frequency sound waves to produce geometric images.
Image Right: Colour Cast - Porcelain, Various sizes
A Celebration of Creativity and Achievement
Luke Steele
CERAMIST
(He/Him)
I wanted to take the opportunity to use my final year in university to create a body of work that carries signification to me as an artist but also as a Christian. I made a series of vessels which represented the seven days of creation, written in the book of Genesis. Using slips I was able to decorate each pot in an abstract form to subtly suggest to the viewer what each vessel represented. This allowed me to tell the creation story in a very lose and free flowing manner which I felt was a rewarding and satisfying project.
Image: A collect of my final vessels showcasing some of the days of creation.
A Celebration of Creativity and Achievement
Mark Cousins
Lens Performance Artist
(He/Him)
Website: cousinsmark.com
Email: mcousins1998@gmail.com
Instagram: @mast.ectomy
Mark Cousins is a Belfast based visual artist primarily focused on lens and performance art. Mark has been involved in performance through the university space from 2021, developing this further to later become involved within the drag scene in NI and beyond.
Collaboration has been integral to Mark’s work, creating pieces surrounding his experience within the queer community. Capturing moments of queer joy and excellence through his polaroids, hardship and pain through his video interviews, and acceptance in one-self through his audio work.
Aiming to fill in the gaps of LGBTQIA+ censorship within NI History, this collection immortalises what is often overlooked.
A Celebration of Creativity and Achievement
Moira Roulston
INTERDISCIPLINARY ARTIST
YouTube: @moiraroulston (She/Her)
Email: moiraroulston@gmail.com
Moira Roulston is a County Down-based artist who works to nurture the historical and spiritual connections that bind us to our land. Layering themes of tradition, philosophy, archaeology, and personal trauma Roulston engages with existential questions that transcend thousands of years of human existence. Using performance, audio, and video art as mediums, Roulston interacts with Neolithic tombs, which personify the mystery of death and humanity's search for purpose.
A Celebration of Creativity and Achievement
Molly WeaversHamilton
VISUAL ARTIST & BOOKBINDER
Instagram: @mollyweavershamilton (She/Her)
Email: mollyweavershamilton@aol.com
In my art practice, I use language and documentation through the means of artist's books and stand-alone written excerpts that serve as chapters of my life. Delving into themes of empathy, confessional, and reconstruction of memory. Through life writing, I explore childhood, relationships, and self-identity, navigating emotional processes and reflecting on personal evolution. Influenced by confessional artists like Louise Bourgeois and Sean Landers, as well as the social realism of Ken Loach, I strive for honesty and connection, inviting viewers to introspect. By employing bookbinding's intimacy, I enhance tactile experiences, weaving in multimedia elements to evoke different life chapters.
A Celebration of Creativity and Achievement
Nicola Murray
CERAMIC ARTIST
(She/Her)
Instagram: @nicolamurray art
Through revisiting the fond memories of my childhood, growing up with a farming background provided me with a wealth of inspiration in which to create art. The main body of my work is constructed with the appreciation of memories held within the countryside, particularly my family routes – past, present, and future, by studying maps, the environment, and figurative imaginings of the presence of my heritage. The focal point of my studies is land, and one of the main reasons why I work within ceramics, using the link of land and clay to provide a special connection between my artwork and home.
A Celebration of Creativity and Achievement
Rachael Wood
MULTIDISCIPLINARY ARTIST
(She/Her)
Instagram: @rachaelmeganart
Over the last two years my work has focused on the theme of movement, with a main focus on dance. It has consisted of a variety of different media including sculpting, lens-based media along with performance, and variations of installations.
My earlier sculptural dancers were inspired by the likes of Degas, I took special interest in the shapes and movement he created in his paintings and sculptures. Influenced by Degas choice of representation of the figure I carried across this same idea of shape and form into my own work.
I never learned dance, but I always found the fast movement shape and joy in the movement of dancers intriguing to watch, enthralling to do and ethereal to experience.
Image Left: The Joy of Dance
A Celebration of Creativity and Achievement
Sonia Reid
MULTI-DISCIPLINARY ARTIST
Website: soniareid.co.uk
Email: soniareid@myyahoo.com
Instagram: @soniareid art (She/Her)
As an artist on the autism spectrum, my practice is heavily influenced by my personal experiences. My work ‘Safe Foods’ utilizes a variety of mediums including sculpture, video, photography, and installation to create tangible representations of my restricted diet and fixed daily routine, and serves as a visual narrative that explores themes of disability, mental health, food, culture, and consumerism. Overall, I aim to blur the lines between art and everyday life, inviting viewers to contemplate the mundane in a new light.
THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS FOR SUPPORTING OUR DEGREE SHOW
CLASS OF 2024
A
Celebration of Creativity & Achievement
