Séamus Nolan is an artist and doctoral student at the School of Art History and Cultural Policy, University College Dublin, the School of Visual Culture, National College of Art and Design, and the Collections Department at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. His practice-based research examines the role of contemporary museums in representing marginal cultures, with a specific focus on Irish Travellers. This research is supported by Taighde Éireann – Research Ireland.
Nolan is the recipient of the 2024 O’Malley Art Award. Recent artworks and curatorial projects include Bafushia at the Hugh Lane Gallery, January–April 2025; Hereditas, a collaborative artwork with CAIRDE, Sligo Arts Festival, and the Sligo Traveller Support Group. This project featured both Bafushia and The Wandering Gaze/An Misló Swuner at The Model, Sligo, 2024, as well as Standing Ground at Sligo City Hall, 2023. He was curator-in-residence for GUIDES, an Arts Council Collection exhibition at the Linenhall Arts Centre, Mayo, 2023, and collaborated with Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre on the Traveller Collection at the Hugh Lane Gallery, 2018.
Other works include the critique of gentrification in Hotel Ballymun, 2007; the amplification of voices marginalized by the Corrib Gas Pipeline in Corrib Gas Project Arts Centre, 2009; the attempted hijacking of a Ryanair flight Flight NM7104, 2011; and the ongoing proposal to honour survivors of institutional abuse in Ireland and recognising those who died in institutional and state care 10th President, 2013 / 2018, which involved inviting President Michael D Higgins to hand over, for the period of one day, the Presidency of Ireland posthumously to Willie Delaney 1957 – 1960, a child who died whilst under the care of the state.
January – December 2025
Dwell Here offers participants a simple proposition: to commit to this time and place while thinking deeply about its urgencies. Together we are curious to learn what can be activated or challenged through the process of dwelling. IMMA encourages reflection across the following themes to consider geographical, historical, political and cultural concepts of Ireland as a starting point to expand and connect international contexts through similarities and differences:
Technologies of Peace – to consider commemorative landscapes and memories of peace (as a dream, movement, or value) while generating perspectives on sustainable coexistence.
The Irish Paradigm – Welcomes artistic research that creates intimacy and connections, while celebrating the perceived agility and freedoms of operating on the periphery. As a small island on the edge of Europe, Ireland often has a challenging relationship with ‘the centre’.
The Museum as a Site of Vibration – consider how the museum and site can create new vibrations and rhythms within the built legacy of empire. How can museums make visible cultural shifts, including erased, censored or marginalised histories, as well as sustainability, planetary care, sharing and hospitality.
Séamus Nolan was the recipient of an Irish Research Council Award in 2021 through the School of Visual Culture in the National College of Art and Design, and the School of Art History and Cultural Policy in University College Dublin in conjunction with the Collection Department of the Irish Museum of Modern Art. This award enables Nolan to conduct a practice-based study which examines the role of the contemporary museum in representing marginal cultures with a specific focus on Irish Travellers. Conducted largely through collaborative creative practice with members of the Travelling community the central aims of the research are to create a process and body of knowledge which, through critical engagement, might generate new methodologies towards active and embodied representation within the museum.
As part of this award IMMA is providing a yearly three-month studio residency for the duration of the practice-based study.
Nolan was a previous 2007 – 2008 IMMA Resident