Forget-Me-Not with Butterfly on Flower Print – Soft Pink

Meet the Artist

About Siobhán Harton

Siobhán Harton is a visual artist, designer, and former co-curator of Trans-Art and Creative Director of Townhall Cavan Arts Space. Born in Cavan and after living there for  the past 10 years, she recently moved to Spiddal, County Galway, and is now developing her freelance practice.

Siobhán works in mixed disciplines; she creates unique multimedia installations, sound art, drawing and collage. Her installations and art works are a response to her own personal and inner experiences as well as reflective and challenging of the wider cultural zeitgeist; and conceptual and interdisciplinary elements resonate throughout her work.

Siobhán was a founding Creative Director at Townhall Cavan Arts Space – a vibrant workshop, performance, exhibition, residency and artist development space in the heart of Cavan town. This space facilitated a number of new and emerging artists to grow and create, and was the site of several exhibitions, performances, and large multidisciplinary arts festivals.

As a curator with Trans-Art Cavan, Siobhán has devised and programmed contemporary arts interventions in County Cavan from 2011-2019. In both curatorial roles she facilitated artist and wider community engagement with the arts across all disciplines, new approaches to engaging the community in participation as well as audience building to support the work of local and visiting artists. Alongside Cavan Town Council and County Council, the co-curated trans-art 2012 project was awarded the Chambers Ireland Excellence in Local Government Awards for Sustaining the Arts.

As a result of driving these trans-formative initiatives, Siobhán is passionate about dedicated independent project spaces and artist-run initiatives, which she sees as playing a central role in the creation of discourse and in creating critical spaces for growth in the field of contemporary art in Ireland.

Siobhan studied Industrial Design at Institute of Technology Sligo 2002, furthered her studies at Dublin Institute of Technology, Mountjoy Square 2008, where she received an Honours Degree in Interior Architecture. In 2010, she continued to complete a MA in Professional Design Practice from Dublin Institute of Technology, Bolton Street.

Artist statement

The world is manic, fast paced, dizzying; and my work is both a response and an antidote to the speed of the everyday. I’m primarily inspired by that which forces us to slow down and take stock – travel, mindfulness, nature; inspired by what compels us to stop and take a breath. I experiment with media and colour to snap ourselves out of autopilot by playing with elements of kitch, irony, iconography, screaming colour; radically combined with the mundane and the everyday, twisted together in both jarring yet considered combinations.

My work is deeply emotional, reflecting the inner world and its lurking madnesses, colour and loudness; but its potential for stillness and reflection. I also love to create immersive mixed media installations: engaging the physical body and the physical space as a portal to our inner worlds and to bring people on a corporeal journey of reflection, quiet and introspection.