In Conversation: Garrett Phelan with Prof. John Quinn
This October, we are hosting three in-conversation lunchtime talks with artists featured in our current exhibition Groundwork: Climate Awareness in the UCC Art Collection. Each artist will explore their practice with an expert from University College Cork across themes of biodiversity, extraction and economics.
Expanding climate awareness through visual art encourages a greater account for stewardship of our damaged planet. Creative practice can be a location and moment of connection that transcends the everyday, offering the opportunity to think differently. Visual art, in this sense, allows us to consider the intricate relationships which impact the natural world and where and how we can situate ourselves in it.
Join artist Garrett Phelan and Professor John Quinn (Zoology, University College Cork) for a conversation that will explore art, ornithology and the environment. Phelan's artwork The Hide Suite (2016) features in the current Glucksman exhibition Groundwork: Climate Awareness in the UCC Art Collection and it will serve as the starting point for this conversation.
Free admission. All welcome. Book here.
Garrett Phelan
Irish artist Garrett Phelan’s practice directly engages the audience with immersive site-specific drawing projects, FM radio broadcasts, sculptural installations, photography and animation. He has exhibited widely, including the 11th Lyon Biennial, France; 4th Auckland Triennial, New Zealand; SMART Project Space, Amsterdam; ICA, London; The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh; Kunstverein, Hannover; Art Statements, Basel 39; Manifesta 5, San Sebastian and a solo exhibition at IMMA in 2012.
In 2007 artist Garrett Phelan was selected by Fingal County Council, Dublin, Ireland to imagine and conceive a public art project as part of the Council's Public Art Programme funded through the Irish State's Per Cent for Art Scheme. THE HIDE PROJECT is an artwork inspired by the artist's own personal history with the coastal area of Fingal, in particular, the magnificent ecology of the Rogerstown Estuary, an area renowned for its bird life. THE HIDE PROJECT consists of four components: THE HIDE SCULPTURE, THE HIDE SUITE, www.thehideproject.com, and HIDE FM.
Professor John Quinn
John Quinn is Professor in Zoology at University college cork. After working in conservation NGOs in Ireland and the UK, John Quinn returned to academia and completed his DPhil at Wolfson College, University of Oxford, on goose ecology in the arctic. He continued to work in Oxford as a postdoc and lecturer on behavioural mechanisms and ecology, in the Department of Biology and Pembroke College, before moving to UCC in 2012, where he became Professor in Zoology in 2015. His research focus is explaining individual variation in cognition and personality in wild animal systems, especially in the context of environmental effects and the gut microbiota. He is also interested in applied ecology, especially in the marine and farming environment. John was awarded an ERC Consolidator grant at UCC, was a founding Vice President of the Irish Ecological Association, and has been Associate Editor/Editor at three international journals for a total of around 20 years.