Student Forum Group 2019|2020

Maya Lydia Bushell

Maya Lydia Bushell is a fourth year student at Trinity College Dublin pursuing a B.A. in English Literature and History of Art and Architecture. Her senior Capstone project is an extended work of creative nonfiction centred on the relationship between food, family, and identity. Maya is the recipient of the Anne Crookshank Prize in History of Art and Architecture, and has worked for a number of arts organisations including Jason McCoy Gallery, the Trinity College Gallery Art Hire Scheme, and Printed Matter, Inc. Her artistic practices include song writing and collage, and her creative writing has been published in Carta and Icarus magazines, the latter of which she was the Editor from 2018 to 2019.

Eva Comerford

Eva Comerford is a third year student of English Literature and History of Art and Architecture in Trinity College Dublin, with a background in Middle Eastern studies. As an artist, she specialises in drypoint print and has had work appear in Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, as well as the Dublin Art Book Fair. Her research looks at the relationship between art and the written word, particularly through the lens of publication, historically and otherwise. She is a volunteer for The Trinity College Gallery Art Hire Scheme, has been involved in Trinity Publications and is a proficient musician of traditional Irish music.

Aoife Donnellan

Aoife Donnellan is a final year Philosophy and English Literature student in Trinity College Dublin. Her primary research interest is in publications, and the curatorial bias in digital archiving. She is currently undertaking an Open Collections capstone project in conjunction with Trinity’s archives looking at digital archiving and digital space. In 2018 / 2019, Aoife was the culture editor for District Magazine’s ‘Guide To Dublin’. She is currently the editor of MISC Magazine, Ireland’s oldest student journal. She is also on the Abbey Theatre Young Assessors panel. During summer 2019 she was a Visual Arts Intern at the Galway International Arts Festival. Aoife also took part in a number of summer schools including the IMMA summer school on Arts & Politics, as well as ‘Curating on The Move’, a programme at the Venice Biennale, run by the University of Zürich.

Sinéad Onóra Kennedy

Sinéad Onóra Kennedy is a visual artist, designer, and musician based in Dublin. Graduating from the Fashion department in the National College of Art & Design (NCAD) in 2013, her degree show – a series of cocoon like garments based on the short story ‘Metamorphosis’ by Franz Kafka – was the recipient of the Talbot Gallery’s Most Promising Graduate Award. She has exhibited in the Douglas Hyde Gallery 3, Pallas Projects, Catalyst Arts Centre, and Brown Thomas, Co Dublin. Residencies include Aras Eanna (Inis Oírr), Listhus (Iceland) and Talbot Gallery and Studios (Dublin). Her work has been awarded the NCAD Staff Prize, the Persil Irish Fashion Award, and Best Design Tiger Dublin Fringe Festival 2015. Sinead plays traditional Irish music on the fiddle, and has a particular interest in the tunes, songs, dances and stories from the South West region of Donegal. She is also a singer and accompanies her songs on the bouzouki. She has performed at various concerts and festivals including Cairdeas Na bhFidiléirí (Donegal), Arts and Rafts (Sligo), and Electric Picnic (Laois), and has been a resident session musician in the Cobblestone Pub (Dublin) for the past six years. She is currently completing a MA in Creative Digital Media in TU Dublin.

Eleni Kolliopoulou

Eleni Kolliopoulou (1980, Athens) is a media artist (performance, video, installations) particularly interested in the intersection between performance and philosophy. She studied at the University Kapodistriaka of Athens in the Department of Methodology, History and Theory of Science (1998 -2003, BA). She moved to Turin (Italy) in September 2007 where she frequented Philip Radice school of Physical Theatre for one year while studying contemporary dance, dance theatre and butoh dance and taking part in several public group performances. Between 2008 and 2013 she accomplished her BA and MA degree by the Academy of Fine Arts of Turin; during the first year of her MA she was in Germany (Hochscuele Burg Gibiechestein Halle an der Saale) as an Erasmus student for the academic year 2011/2012. She is currently close to the submission of an interdisciplinary practice based PhD (2016-2019) at Ulster University across the Departments of Drama (Magee) and Arts and Design (Belfast). Her research project concerns the modalities in which the Butoh body notion could be used in order to enrich creation process of Installation art.

Maija Makela

Maija Makela is an artist working across music / audio, performance and writing, and is a student of English Literature at Trinity College Dublin. She was named one of ’50 people to watch in 2019′ by The Irish Times, who described her music as ‘impossible to ascribe to a particular moment or easily identifiable space.’ Her work explores the politics of narrative, gender, folklore and shadowed histories. Performances across the UK and Ireland include Other Voices, Electric Picnic, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Richmix arts centre and North Finchley Arts Depot in London. Her writing has been published in numerous places including Carta, The Thin Air, Icarus and various independent zines. In 2020 she will complete a residency in Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh where she will collaborate with composer Rachael Lavelle to make a text and sound-piece exploring intimacy, the occult and the internet. In 2019 she took part in the IMMA summer school on art and politics and the TBG+S Young Art Writers programme. She is currently working on an archival research project concerning Beckett’s female influences and her album ‘Bath Time’ will be released in November on Trapped Animal Records.

Cian Malin

Cian Malin is a final-year Drama and History of Art student at Trinity College Dublin. His involvement in the arts is cross-disciplinary, encompassing academic and practical experience in visual art, architecture, theatre and music. Recently, he has been involved in a number of shows in the Samuel Beckett Theatre, TCD, as part of the Debut Festival. He performed in Van Gogh’s Sunflowers by Charles Mee and Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. by Alice Birch, and worked as a deviser and performer on The Epiphany of Eileen O’Keefe (Samuel Beckett Theatre, Whale Theatre, and Electric Picnic). He is currently working on a devised theatre piece inspired by research into opera and the Theatre of Images. His background in History of Art and experience as a musician inform his theatre practice. He is also a member of the TCD College Gallery Art Hire Scheme

Sara Muthi

Sara Muthi is a Dublin based performance art curator and researcher. She is a recent graduate of MA in Art in the Contemporary World at the National College of Art & Design (NCAD) and now undertaking a Masters in Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin. As opposed to publishing text as the result of her research, Sara prefers to forefront the questions, shortcomings and potential surrounding live-art practices in the Ireland through performance and open dialogue. This was realised in POST-DANCE (2019), a performance and lecture commissioned for the Project Arts Centre developed during her INCUBATE residency at Draíocht in the summer of 2019. Sara also acts as the communications assistant for Block Universe: London’s leading performance art festival and international commissioning body and the Hang Tough Gallery in Portobello. As managing editor of inaction.ie she commissions critical writing on Irish performance art while developing events such as the performance and panel discussion Anticipation: Actualisation (2018) at the NCAD Gallery.

Amy Ní Mhurchú

Amy Ní Mhurchú is exploring socially engaged art practice, particularly in building types of knowledges with affected communities to provide the means of disrupting hegemonic decision making. Current research includes the understanding of our bodies as a unique interface and instrument of building tacit knowledge about our environs as a means of living a contented life.Amy is a member of A4Sounds Art Studios and an undergraduate Art student at Institute of Art, Design + Technology, Dún Laoghaire, graduating in 2020. She facilitates the A4Sounds Art Reading Group and participated in the 2019 IMMA Summer School on Art and Politics.

Aisling Phelan

Aisling Phelan is currently in her second year in National College of Art & Design (NCAD). She is undertaking a joint degree course in Fine Art Media and Critical Cultures. As a conceptual artist, this enables and encourages her to think critically about her work and concepts. Her practice encompasses photography, video, sound and performance art. Her work has recently taken the form of live VR performances and using photography and video as a way of documentation and preservation, which is particularly relevant in a time of rapid gentrification in Dublin city. In her work, she deals with immaterial labour and cultural labour and the complexities and problems that arise when working in a creative field. In 2018, her photographs were chosen for a publication created by NCAD Master Fine Art students and she performed for Jessie Hopkins for her MFA show. Upcoming work includes a live VR performance in the IMMA Open Studio in December in response to the ‘Desire’ exhibition and a live performance for Martijn Tellingas ‘(un) presence’ in 2020. Her work was published in the 2019 Dublin Art Book Fair after successfully gaining a place on the Temple Bar Gallery Young Art Writers Programme.