Fingal County Council announces 2024 Fine Art Residency Award Recipients
Fingal County Council, in collaboration with Graphic Studio Dublin, is pleased to announce Beata Piekarska-Daly and Jack Pierce as the recipients of the Fine Art Print Residency Award 2024.
Fingal County Council, in collaboration with Graphic Studio Dublin, is pleased to announce Beata Piekarska-Daly and Jack Pierce as the recipients of the Fine Art Print Residency Award 2024. This important opportunity offers Fingal artists a unique opportunity to develop their craft within Ireland's leading fine art printmaking studio.
Sarah O’Neill, County Arts Officer, added: “We are delighted to support two exceptional artists this year. These residencies will provide them with the resources and environment to experiment, innovate, and expand their artistic practices. This collaboration with Graphic Studio Dublin reaffirms Fingal County Council’s dedication to advancing the goals of the Arts Plan 2019-2025 by creating meaningful opportunities for Fingal artists.”
The Fine Art Print Residency will take place from this November 2024, offering the selected artists the opportunity to work with a Master Printmaker and a professional printing team to produce a series of limited-edition prints. The artists’ proofs will also be entered into the Fingal County Council Municipal Art Collection.
When asked about the award Jack Pierce said, “I am thrilled and honoured to have been selected to do this residency. Much of my work results in image-based outcomes so getting the opportunity to work with Master Printers to test and trial options for outcomes will give me the opportunity to expand my practice in new and exciting ways.”
Beata Piekarska-Daly added, “I am looking forward to this unique opportunity, with Graphic Studio Dublin, to learn and develop new techniques in an environment that is supportive and engaging in a new way to me.”
Graphic Studio Dublin was established in 1960 to facilitate the process of engaging with the medium of printmaking to express artistic ideas, and to facilitate the development of successful working practices for artists through all stages of their careers.
We provide printmaking facilities and technical assistance in a supportive working environment, and teach the skills needed, to enable artists develop successful working practices, and to engage with print media to extend existing art practices.
Graphic Studio Dublin facilitates the following print techniques: Etching, linocut, drypoint, carborundum, woodblock, aquatint, photo intaglio, blind embossing, collagraphy, letterpress, mezzotint, and screen print. Technical assistance and education of artist members in the above printmaking techniques is core to our ethos.
About the Artists
Beata Piekarska-Daly
Beata Piekarska-Daly is a Polish-born, Fingal-based visual artist. Her practice seeks a symbiosis between contemporary art and living, through connecting polymorphic and hybrid methodologies consisting of time-based installations, painting, video performance and societal involvement. Consideration is given to immersion in fluidity of form, sustainable materiality, and the natural environment.
Piekarska–Daly’s works are based on her research in awareness and intuitive responses between science, tradition, the impact of our beliefs on the environment, and the co-dependency we co-create. In her work, nature vs culture emerges as a collaborative and participatory tool and idea.
Two ongoing projects, ‘Eyes Wide’ and ‘the Boat’, are currently taking place across various locations across Country Fingal. Piekarska-Daly has been selected for solo exhibitions such as ‘PainThING ‘at Rathfarnham Castle, 2022, ‘Art Rights Prize’, and ‘International Virtual Art Award’, 2021 as well as group shows at Hambly & Hambly Gallery, 2024, ‘Displacement and Belonging HOME’ at Rua Red 2023, ‘Breaking Borders’ at Luan Gallery and GOMA Waterford, 2022, and Over Nature touring show across Ireland, 2019-2020.
Beata Piekarska–Daly is a recipient of the 2022 Fingal County Council Visual Arts Award, 2021/2022 Art Council Ireland Agility Award, 2021 Arts Council Ireland Professional Development Award. Her work is represented in the OPW collection and private collection across Ireland, Europe, United States and Australia.
Jack Pierce
Jack Piere is a Dublin-based, multi-disciplinary, artist and educator from Fingal, specializing in textile art. Their practice integrates costume, sculpture, and paint to explore themes of queerness, Irish identity, and the current ecological crisis. They are driven by material processes and experimentation, interpreting, altering, and reimagining the world through play. Currently based in La Catedral studios, Pierce is working on an Agility Award-supported project titled ‘Look Up What’s Lost.’ This project draws from Irish mythology to examine the paradox of a country that once developed laws, alphabets, and culture around trees, yet is now the most deforested country in Europe.
Pierce’s interest in a sustainable future has led them to explore alternative fibers and to understand the entire process of creating textile artifacts. By looking back to make sense of the future, they incorporate materials such as flax and foraged plant fibers, developing skills in traditional crafts like spinning, braiding, and basketry. This fascination with design and millinery stemmed from an interest in sculpture and fantasy and results in pieces that help people escape reality.
Their practice questions societal norms and gender roles, aiming to open up conversations about our future and our place in it. Current work builds on themes explored in college while incorporating native Irish plants and found materials to explore what was and what may be.
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