Aideen Barry announced as new artist in residence at Cork Midsummer Festival

Cork Midsummer Festival is excited to announce new artist in residence for 2025 / 2026, Aideen Barry.

Aideen Barry is a practising Visual Artist based in Ireland - elected to the RHA as an associate in 2020, she is also a member of Aosdána and lectures in several universities and schools of visual art in Ireland, the US and Europe.

Barry’s work encompasses a vast range of disciplines and subjects, such as domestic labour, environmental fracture, and human vulnerability. Her work meditates on feminism, classism, intersectionality, and inequality. Utilising archives, museums, and other dialectic processes, she seeks to transfer the unknown through the experiential; democratising access to visual culture and complex ideas of otherness through clever ploys of collaboration and plot devices that seduce the viewer into her multi spatial experiences. Her works reflect her commitment to confronting unsettling truths, sinister systems and addressing gaps in the canon.

Selected projects include exhibitions at: Bangkok Art Biennial (TH), Salzburg Kunstverein (AT) , New Art Dealers (US), Centre for the Less Good Idea (SA), Elephant West ( UK), Mothers Tankstation ( IRE), The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Oaxaca (Mex), Louise T. Blouin (UK), Moderne Mussett Sweden, The Loop Biennale (ESP), Matucana 100 (Chile), FRIEZE Art Fair (UK) ,The Wexner Centre Ohio, The Royal Hibernian Academy, the Museum des Beaux Arts (FR), The Crawford Municipal Gallery, The Butler Gallery, The Banff Centre Canada, the Headlands Centre for the Arts San Francisco, Liste Art Fair Basel Switzerland, BAC Geneva, Arco Art Fair (ESP), CH ACO (Chile) and Catherine Clark Gallery US. Barry has received numerous awards for her practice including recent awards: A Culture Ireland Award 2018, The Vermont Studio Centre Fellowship Award 2017, Project New Work Awards from the Arts Council of Ireland, Arts Council of Ireland Bursary Awards, Modern Ireland in 100 Art Works 2015 award from the Royal Irish Academy, the Silent Light Film Award at the Cork Film Festival, Travel and Training Awards from the Arts Council of Ireland, and AIB Prize shortlisted. In 2021 she won the Thomas Dammann Junior Memorial Trust Award, The Golden Fleece Award and a Project New Work Award from the Arts Council. In 2022 she was awarded the International Studio & Curatorial Project Residency & Temple Bar Gallery & Studios Award and undertook her residency in January 2023.

We’ll keep you up to date on Aideen’s work over the coming months - stay tuned!