Podcast
Ultraviolet Art Talks
Hosted by Caren Sullivan · EN
Created and hosted by Caren Sullivan, Ultraviolet Art Talks is a podcast/videocast series of fascinating interviews exploring the human side of artists, curators, musicians and people involved in the art scene, going strong over 6 years in its18th Season also on Instagram. More recently in Seasons 17 and 18, face to face interviews in the artist studios. You will be stepping into the fascinating inner world of creative minds, if you're passionate about the Arts, this is the place! For more, follow Ultraviolet Art Talks on Instagram @_ultravioletarttalks_ for live interviews. Motion graphics, editing and filming by conceptual artist Jonathan Mayhew @jonathanmayhewart
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Ultraviolet Art Talks Season 18 EP06 Àjàó Babátúndé Lawal
1w ago00:14:38Tap to summarizeClosing Season 18 a wonderful, super positive chat with artist Àjàó Babátúndé Lawal in 2024. Always curious about what's is like to be inside an artist's studio? Watch full interview here.Àjàó is a Nigerian-born Irish artist whose work is elementally about his African heritage and the influence of his adoptive home country, Ireland.After exploring several career paths, including business, social care, and nursing, Ajao ultimately pursued his passion for art education with the encouragement of newly made friends and loved ones.Àjàó’s body of work reflects a diverse range of themes. His painting explores various aspects of life as the author has experienced them and as they still exist in the modern world. These themes encompass ordinary daily events, history, personal experiences, and imagination.Àjàó’s art serves as a platform for celebrating the vibrant African culture and the inherent beauty it encompasses. It is an artistic expression and a narrative of his African heritage, life, and traditions.Àjàó utilises his art to convey hope and inspiration to families worldwide. Ajao’s art is deeply rooted in the life experiences of actual black individuals. Themes of love, hope, nature, culture, rituals, traditions, courage, humility, and serenity characterise his work.Àjàó’s artistic portfolio encompasses a diverse range of subjects, such as figurative art, portraiture, nature, abstract art, and more. Ajao’s unquenchable passion is to preserve and promote African culture, while also advocating for equal representation for aspiring artists in our diverse and multicultural society.Àjàó’s work has been featured in several group exhibitions over the past few years such as at Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) in March 2024 as part of the 2023 RDS Visual Art Awards.Follow Ultraviolet Art Talks on Instagram @_ultravioletarttalks_For more information, follow Àjàó on Instagram @skenkious_art Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Ultraviolet Art Talks Season 18 EP05 Sharon Murphy
2w ago00:14:59Tap to summarizeOn this episode, Caren Sullivan talks to Artist and Curator Sharon Murphy in her studio in 2024. Curious about what is like inside an artist studio? Watch full episode here!Sharon Murphy is a visual artist and curator based between Dublin and Paris whose practice encompasses photography, video and installation. Drawing on a background in theatre and informed by psychoanalysis and magic realism, her work provokes viewers to question what they are seeing, bringing their own histories and narratives to ‘complete’ the meaning of the image. Balancing the theoretical and the experiential (including that of the viewer), Murphy is especially drawn to the inherent binary nature of photography - the tensions of the medium between its real/indexical nature and its unreal/constructed nature. The photograph is simultaneously both record/truth and constructed/staged subject to multiple interpretations, perceptions and distortions by both maker and viewer. Murphy investigates the boundaries between real and fictive spaces within the pictorial frame: concentrating on recurring motifs of theatre curtains; outdoor carousels; circus tents; performative sites; city parks; and empty stages. These scenes become the point of departure for a wider exploration of the tension between hidden and revealed, negative and positive, illusion and disillusion, the uncanny and the unremarkable.Recent exhibitions: Photo Museum Ireland, Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, GOMA, Waterford, Limerick City Gallery, Draíocht, National Gallery of Ireland, RHA, Golden Thread Gallery Belfast, Halftone, PhotoIreland, Loop Festival, Barcelona. Current exhibitions 2025/26: Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast (solo), University Gallery UMAss Boston.Murphy is a co-founding member of Shell/Ter Artist Collective (S/TAC). Her work is held is in private + public collections. She works between Dublin and Paris. Follow Ultraviolet Art Talks on Instagram @_ultravioletarttalks_For more information, follow Sharon Murphy on Instagram @sharon_murphy_atelier @sharon_murphy_curator Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Ultraviolet Art Talks Season 18 EP04 Niamh McCann
3w ago00:14:39Tap to summarizeOn this episode, Caren Sullivan talks to artist Niamh McCann at her studio (Temple Bar Gallery and Studios)I n 2024. Always curious about what is like to be inside an artist studio? Watch full Instagram episode here.Niamh McCann’s work is a considered, individual voice in contemporary Irish art; effortlessly correlating strands of three-dimensional work, painting/drawing and installation. This in itself is unpredictable and frequently humorous, as evidenced in the playful use of appropriated political figuration in her body of work, Furtive Tears. Layering and re-coding the given image, figure or cultural trope, a quasi-deified equilibrium is achieved when juxtaposed with globalised cultural imagery.McCann is recipient of the Norman Houston Commission Award, Washington DC and RHA Stephen McKenna Studio Fellowship. Commissions include Bile Buadha a large scale outdoors sculptural work at Termini Complex, Sandyford and PAVILION/MOTHER’S LAMENT an outdoors sculptural work at National Museum of Ireland, Museum of Country Life. In partnership with Logan Sisley and National Museum of Ireland, McCann co-curated the exhibition Tableaux Vivants at Dublin City Gallery the Hugh Lane looking at collection artworks as totemic messengers. The exhibition was centered around a series of McCann’s work acquired by the Hugh Lane. Artist residencies include Centre Culturel Irlandais Paris, Fire Station Studio Production Residency, Dublin, Penthouse Artist Residency, Brussels, Cemeti Arthouse, Indonesia and HIAP residency in Helsinki, Finland.Solo exhibitions include Hairline Crack [a dialogue] at the Rudolf-Scharpf-Galerie des Wilhelm Hack Museum, Germany, Furtive Tears at Dublin City Gallery the Hugh Lane,La Perruque (Protest Song) at MAC Belfast and Just Left of Copernicus in Visual Carlow. Group exhibitions include: Future Perfect, Rubicon-Projects Brussels and Changing States, BOZAR, Belgium.Niamh McCann works are currently exhibiting on the 25th Biennale of Sydney (14 March - 14 June 2026). The Biennale of Sydney is one of the leading international contemporary art events. It plays an indispensable role in Australia’s engagement with the world, and a meaningful role in the life of the nation.Follow Ultraviolet Art Talks on Instagram @_ulravioletarttalks_For more information, follow Niamh McCann on Instagram @niamhmccnn Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Ultraviolet Art Talks Season 18 EP03 Vanessa Jones
Apr 2900:10:58Tap to summarizeOn this episode, Caren Sullivan talks to artist Vanessa Jones at her studio in 2024. Always curios about what an artist studio looks like? Watch full Instagram interview here.Born in Tennessee, Dublin-based artist Vanessa Jones received her BA in Fine Arts in 2003 from the George Washington University in Washington DC. In 2021, she completed her MFA at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) in Dublin.As a graduate, Vanessa was shortlisted for the RDS Art Prize in 2021 and received the R.C. Lewis-Crosby Award and the RDS Mason, Hayes & Curran LLP Centre Culturel Irlandais Residency Award. Her portraits have been shortlisted in the Zurich Portrait Prize at the National Gallery Ireland in 2020, 2021 and 2022 where her work was awarded Highly Commended in 2021. She has her work included in Art Jakarta 2022; Mata Irlandia 2022 in the World Trade Centre, Jakarta; the OPW exhibition Person Presence Perception, Portlaoise; Páipéar at Hangtough Contemporary, Dublin; Prosopopoeia at Molesworth Gallery, Dublin; and Draíocht’s you breathe differently down here curated by Amanda Coogan, Blanchardstown. She was also the winner of the inaugural self-portrait Sequested Prize, 2021 based in London. Her work is in the OPW National Collection as well as private and corporate collections in both Ireland and abroad.Vanessa is also one of the 2022 Next Generation Artists Awardees from the Arts Council Ireland and is currently a part-time lecturer in the Painting Department at NCAD.For more interviews, follow Ultraviolet Art Talks on Instagram @_ultravioletarttalks_For more information, follow Vanessa Jones on Instagram @vanessaleejones81 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Ultraviolet Art Talks Season 18 EP02 Stephen Taylor
Apr 2200:12:03Tap to summarizeOn this episode, Caren Sullivan talks to artist Stephen Taylor on his studio in 2024. Always wanted to know what an artist studio looks like? Watch full Instagram interview here.Stephen Taylor is an Irish artist based in Dublin. He studied visual arts practice at IADT, and combines his work as an artist with working as part of the team at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Stephen’s paintings and drawings explore the strangeness of our optical experience, with ideas drawn from popular culture, memory, observation and imagination, cast a meticulous and mischievous eye on urban, suburban and domestic scenes that might otherwise go unnoticed. His subjects are dogs and their walkers, urban foxes, horses, trees, buildings, plants – all given an equal non-hierarchical respect and attention. His work has been acquired by collectors including the Office of Public Works, the Beacon Hospital, the British Embassy in Dublin, and Nova UCD.Follow Ultraviolet Art Talks on Instagram @_ultravioletarttalksFor more information, follow Stephen Taylor on Instagram @stephentails Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Ultraviolet Art Talks Season 18 EP01 Van Tran
Apr 1500:12:53Tap to summarizeOpening Season 18, Caren Sullivan talks to artist Van Tran on his studio in 2024. Want to know what an artist studio is like? Watch full Instagram interview here.Van Tran (b. 2000, Hanoi, Vietnam) is a visual artist working between Vietnam and Ireland. His practice centres on traditional Vietnamese lacquer, engaging themes of migration, ecological interdependence, and material memory.Through layered surfaces incorporating silver leaf, eggshell, and shell fragments, Tran constructs paintings that function as temporal archives. His work reflects lived experience across geographies, drawing parallels between avian migration and diasporic identity.He has exhibited in Ireland, Vietnam, China, and France, including exhibitions at the National Museum of Fine Art (Vietnam) and The Lab Gallery (Dublin).Artist statementPainting begins before its physical making. It exists first within memory, material, and inherited knowledge. My practice centers on Vietnamese lacquer, a medium shaped by generations of makers, including my parents, whose thirty-year engagement with lacquer forms the foundation of my relationship to it.Having grown up between Vietnam and Ireland, I experience identity as something continuously negotiated across distance. Places return altered; memories persist while landscapes shift. Lacquer mirrors this condition. Built through layering, sanding, concealment, and revelation, it records time through accumulation.Here, Where It Remains examines migration through the parallel movements of diasporic experience and bird migration. Birds appear not as symbols but as bodies guided by instinct, climate, and survival — navigating between departure and return.The works treat lacquer as a temporal surface where traces emerge and disappear. Silver leaf oxidizes, shells fracture, and pigments darken. These transformations echo how identity forms through erosion and persistence. Migration becomes neither loss nor arrival, but an ongoing state of becoming.Follow Ultraviolet Art Talks on Instagram @_ultravioletarttalks_For more information, follow Van Tran on Instagram @van.trran Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Ultraviolet Art Talks Season 17 EP04 Lee Welch
Apr 100:13:20Tap to summarizeClosing superbly this special Season 17, Caren Sullivan talks to artist Lee Welch in his studio. Also Watch full Instagram interview here.Lee Welch is an artist who works in painting, drawing, and installation, but his true medium is the space between knowing and not knowing—the familiar made strange. His paintings are fragments of a dream you can’t quite place: figures and objects pared to their essence, hovering in a world both intimate and alien. Emerging from the shadows of art history, architecture, literature, and tennis, as well as his own private archive, Welch’s work distills, abstracts, and rebuilds, creating a visual language entirely his own. Figures appear in domestic scenes or leisure, their mundane actions charged with eerie resonance. They feel close yet distant, their flattened forms and muted textures like memories just out of reach. Welch’s paintings are not just seen; they are felt—a faint ache, a distant hum, lingering long after you’ve looked away.Lee Welch was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1975 and currently lives and works in Dublin, Ireland. Welch creates gestural, atmospheric paintings that attest to the psychical and emotional depths of his chosen subjects and map out delicate negotiations between beauty, desire, and the painted image. Depicting figures from his own milieu, as well as from history, literature, music, and tennis, Welch finds feeling in that which he depicts, always rendered with the intensity of his particular humanism; a close looking akin to love. In each subject’s specificity, the artist reveals the universal feelings that connect us to each other, and that stretch from our present moment back through time.Welch received his BFA from the National College of Art and Design in 2009 and his MFA from Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam in 2011. Currently based at the dlr Baths Artist Studios, he has previously held residencies at NCAD, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, and the Banff Centre for Arts, the latter supported by the Arts Council.Welch received his BFA from the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) in 2009 and his MFA from Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam in 2011. He has since been widely exhibited internationally and received numerous awards. Recent exhibitions have taken place at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University; Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC), León, Spain; Glucksman Gallery, Cork; Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp and Kerlin Gallery, Dublin. His paintings are in private and public collections such as the MB Art Foundation, the Arts Council, Hugh Lane Gallery, and the OPW - State Art Collection.Lee Welch is part of the duo Hallahan & Welch, a curatorial partnership founded by Paul Hallahan and Lee Welch, two artists with a deep-rooted commitment to the Irish arts scene. Having established influential artist-led spaces in the late 2000s, Hallahan with SOMA (Waterford) and Welch with FOUR (Dublin), the duo has spent over a decade fostering platforms for contemporary art through economic and social shifts.Enjoying the podcast? Follow Ultraviolet Art Talks on Instagram @_ultravioletarttalks_For more information, follow Lee Welch on Instagram @_leewelch_ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Ultraviolet Art Talks Season 17 EP03 Matthew Coll
Mar 2500:07:07Tap to summarizeOn this episode, Caren Sullivan talks to artist Matthew Coll in 2024 in a super studio visit! Watch full Instagram episode here.Matthew Coll is an Irish artist based in Dublin. He graduated from NCAD’s Fine Art Painting BA in 2022 and works predominantly in painting, sculpture and installation. His work is part of several private and public collections, including the Office of Public Works, St Vincent’s University Hospital and Teeling Whiskey Distillery. He has received several awards, including NCAD's Clancy Quay Studio Graduate Residency Award 2023/2024, the Arts Council’s Agility Award 2023 and Fingal County Council's Artists’ Support Scheme Bursaries 2023 & 2025.His current work focuses on the subject matter of crowds, exploring the influence between the collective and the individual, how shared energies of bliss or discontent become channelled into constructive and destructive forces. Utilising found imagery and photography from daily life as a starting point for source imagery. Painting actual and imagined gatherings, ranging from joyous raves to turbulent riots, aiming to depict a reality slipping away, where Real and Unreal become indistinguishable. Distorting the origin of the image through the painting process, often dragging, sanding, scraping and pouring paint across the surface and occasionally deconstructing structural components, pursuing a simultaneous harmony and conflict between points of representation and abstraction. Whilst frequently working on found or discarded materials as the painting surface.Enjoying studio visits episodes? Follow Ultraviolet Art Talks on Instagram @_ultravioletarttalks_For more information, follow Matthew Coll on Instagram @matthewcoll.art Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Ultraviolet Art Talks Season 17 EP02 Leah Hewson
Mar 1800:08:17Tap to summarizeOn this episode, Caren Sullivan visits artist Leah Hewson in her studio in 2024. Always wanted to know what is like to be inside an artist studio? Watch full Instagram interview here.Leah Hewson has a First-Class BA(Hons) degree in Fine Art from IADT, Dublin Ireland.Solo exhibitions include 'Kin Connection', The Royal Hibernian Academy (2024), ‘Blowout’ Stoney Road Press, INK Miami(2022), 'Ammo Veil' ,Hillsboro Fine Art gallery (2018) and ‘Scintilla’, The Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin (2017) which was the culmination of work produced during a six-month residency at The RHA School. Other residencies include Nars Foundation, Brooklyn, New York (2018), SIM Residency, Berlin (2019) and Wilton Park Studios Residency, Dublin in (2019 -20), Facebook AIR program (2020).Hewson won the Whyte's Award for painting at the 190th RHA Annual Exhibition, was shortlisted for the Hennessy Craig Biennial Award in 2019 and is accredited with the Elizabeth Fitzpatrick Travel Bursary Award 2018.Hewson's work continues to be collected internationally, including being auctioned at Sotheby's, while public collections include The Trinity College Dublin History of Art collection, The Office of Public Works, Dublin, The Law Society of Ireland, the Microsoft Collection, Fidelity Investments and The Cleveland Clinic. Hewson recently created an installation for Art on Paper in New York in 2022, and more recently Beyond the Pale Festival and has painted murals at Stoney Road Press and Kicky's restaurant in Dublin.Artist Statement;"“Beneath the threshold of conscious awareness lies the unconscious mind. Accounting for approximately 95% of total brain activity, this domain governs much of human cognition through automatic and affective mechanisms. It serves as a dynamic archive of experiences, memories, and associative patterns that shape our perception, decision-making, and behaviour. These shared unconscious processes also connects us as humans on a deeper level across cultures through our collective unconscious.I aim to explore this hidden space through an introspective painting practice. My goal is to find freedom in expression—free from social expectations or aesthetic rules. Inspired by Jung’s theory of Individuation, I access the unconscious through practices that create a state of flow, such as meditation, automatic writing, and movement. In the studio, I adopt an impulsive and instinctive relationship to colour, materials, and techniques, remaining open to any possibility. I listen to hypnotic repetitive music through headphones and work on multiple pieces at once in order to let go of control and create the optimal environment for flow state to emerge. The work begins with pure abstract movement and evolves into a dialogue between unconscious gestures and conscious symbols. Through this process, a visual language of layered patterns and grids emerges that is complex yet playful and invites a contemplative platform between individual and collective experience.The dance between elements and layers in the paintings signals the impossibility of remaining solely in the realm of the unconscious. Taking these elements from my abstract lexicon, I extend my artistic expression into supplementary forms such as installation, sculpture, and murals. This is an attempt to hold the unconscious experiences that feature in the present reality and offer them a space of their own to exist as symbols and beacons of the unconscious.”Enjoying this podcast? Follow Ultraviolet Art Talks on Instagram @_ultravioletarttalks_For more information, follow Leah Hewson on Instagram @leahewson Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Ultraviolet Art Talks Season 17 EP01 Mia Shattock
Mar 1100:08:29Tap to summarizeOpening a Special Season 17, Caren Sullivan visits artist Mia Shattock in her studio in 2024, find out what happens behind the scenes of an artist studio!You can also watch full interview here.Mia Shattock is a painter from Dublin, Ireland, interested in how film narratives permeate our understanding of reality and how media imagery moulds our sense of self in the digital age. Her large scale oil paintings capture the unseen elements of media portrayal. She uses a monochrome palette, building some up in full colour glazes to exude a dreamlike quality, or leaving the underpainting as its final form. The work dismantles ideas of hyperreality, prompting viewers to acknowledge the pervasive presence of media constructs, initiating a dialogue between film and philosophy and unravelling the intricacies of human emotion and perception as they intersect with cinema.Education2023 MFA in Fine Art, National College of Art and Design, Dublin, Ireland.2022 CFA Introduction to the Creative Use of Archives, IADT, Dublin, Ireland2022-23 London Fine Art Studios Representational Art Course series, Online, London Fine Art Studios2018-22 Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art (Studio Plus), National College of Art and Design, Dublin, Ireland, awarded first class honours2017-18 QQI Level 5 in Art, Graphics and Print-making, Ballyfermot College of Further Education, Dublin, IrelandSelected Exhibitions2024 Artworks 2024: Behind the Curtain, group show, VISUAL Carlow, Old Dublin Road, Carlow.2024 NCAD MFA Graduate Showcase, NCAD, Thomas Street, Dublin, Ireland2024 Cracks in the mirror, workshop and display, Hugh Lane Gallery, Parnell Square, Dublin, Ireland2023 Art Riddler Exhibition, group show, 10 Wicklow Street, Dublin, Ireland2023 Dublin Modular: SUSTAIN, group show, Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin, Ireland2023 Bigger Than Us, group show, Rua Red Arts Centre, Dublin, Ireland2022 Art Riddler Exhibition, group show, 10 Wicklow Street, Dublin, Ireland2022 NCAD Degree show, NCAD, Dublin, Ireland2022 Painting as an Expression of Humanity, group show, National Treasury Management Agency, Dublin, Ireland2022 Narrative Structures of Anticipation, NCAD Margaret Clarke Gallery, Dublin, Ireland2021 Dublin Art Book Fair 2021: Manual, Collective Zine, Temple bar gallery and studios, Dublin, Ireland2021 Positives: Painting in the Pandemic 2021, Online group show, National Treasury Management Agency, Dublin, Ireland2020 Ballyfermot College 30 year anniversary exhibition, Group show, Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin, Ireland (postponed) Awards, Residencies and Publications2022 Clancy Quay Superprojects Professional Development Programme2022 Awarded Arts Council Visual Arts Agility Award2022 Shortlisted for Ormond Art Studios Graduate Residency Award2021 Dublin Art Book Fair 2021: Manual, Collective Zine, Temple bar gallery and studios, Dublin, IrelandCollections2024 Private collections2023 Private collections2022 National Treasury Management Agency, Dublin, Ireland2022 Private Collections2018 Ballyfermot College of Further Education Art Collection, Dublin, IrelandEnjoyed this episode? Follow Ultraviolet Art Talks on Instagram @_ultravioletarttalks_For more information, follow Mia Shattock on Instagram @miashattockartist Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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