Séamus Nolan’s practice relates a critique of its own legitimacy, each context and set of concerns is tested against the subject, in an attempt to unravel basic beliefs and inform a process of equivalence. His work is concerned with assembling alternative power relations, energy and possibility, in reconfiguring the everyday as a means to examine or question the purveyors of meaning. Nolan’s work often operates in conjunction with local community groups, and invites both a national and international audience to interact on a very personal level with this local activity, with the piece of work itself, and most importantly, with the context of its presentation.
Nolan is a curator in residence in the Linenhall arts centre Castlebar. Recent artwork includes Rooftop Squat, Architecture and Activism, The Spare Room Project, Cork; Traveller Collection at the Hugh Lane, Dublin City Gallery and Fourthspace, Inhabiting the Bagieon, Athens, Greece.
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