Chloe MooreIntroducing, Grace Ryan, a 24-year-old Dublin-based artist, who recently graduated with a degree in Fine Art Print from the National College of Art and Design. Her talent and hard work were recognised when she received the Black Church Print Studio graduate award in 2023, this honour enabled her to secure a full-time position at the studio, giving her a dedicated space to continue developing her artistic practice.
Throughout the past year, Grace Ryan has actively participated in numerous high-profile exhibitions, establishing herself as a prominent figure in the art community. Among these exhibitions are the esteemed RDS Visual Arts Awards held at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), where her work was showcased to a wide audience. Additionally, she was featured in “Unlimiting the Edition” at The Library Project, an exhibition that likely highlighted innovative approaches to printmaking. Her inclusion in the Office of Public Works collection further underscores the recognition and appreciation her work has garnered.
Ryan’s artistic practice is diverse, encompassing various mediums such as printmaking, sculpture, and installation. She has a unique approach to her art, focusing on the re-examination of traditionally gendered materials. Her works are characterised by a sense of hybridity, which involves blending different elements to create something new and complex. This hybridity is central to her practice, allowing her to queer notions of beauty, gender, and abjection. By doing so, she challenges conventional ideas and encourages viewers to think beyond traditional boundaries.
By encouraging this mode of engagement, Ryan’s work serves as a critique of social, gendered, and material histories. Her art thus becomes a powerful tool for questioning and challenging the status quo, making her an important voice in the discourse surrounding contemporary art and gender.
We had an insightful chat with Grace about her journey as a visual artist. She shared her experiences, discussed her creative process, and outlined her long-term goals.
What inspired you to pursue a career in visual art and printmaking?
I knew I always wanted to pursue a career in something creative for as long as I can remember. Printmaking took me by surprise when I started at NCAD. I love the specialised manual craft and attention to detail and process that is vital to successful printmaking. There are also really no limitations to the art form, there are so many possibilities and ways to create prints, and I constantly find the skills I have from printmaking spilling over to many other disciplines I engage with like sculpture, metalwork, woodwork etc.
How has growing up in Ireland influenced your artistic vision and style?
I’m definitely inspired by my surroundings whether that be consciously or subconsciously. The materials I work with range from animal skins to wood, to flowers to raw materials like latex. Elements of natural life are recurring in my work, and there is an undeniable link between nature and womanhood that plays out within my practice. Being Irish, I feel a lot of people can relate to having a strong connection to natural life and the land around us, and with that comes stories of our histories and mythologies. Irish folklore centres around feminine energy in many different ways, and I do feel myself referring back to this at different points while I create. Alternatively, I interrogate the human construction of religious, social and sexual mores. Ireland’s recent history has a lot of unbagging to do in relation to the treatment of women. I tap into different elements for different pieces of work. I think there are so many Irish artists doing amazing things right now in the creative industry, and everyone’s approach and inspirations come from different places.
“Bovine Bodies” by Grace Ryan
What techniques and materials do you prefer to use in your printmaking?
I have a love for copper plate etchings. Working in this medium does feel like a safe space for me. I specifically use a process called photoetching, where an image is screen-printed onto a copper plate, from there, the regular etching process begins. Although I love the traditionalism of the craft, for me the excitement comes from creating new processes of printmaking. Last year for my degree show exhibition, I created a method of pigment-dying bitmapped images into latex sheets using copper plates. After a lot of testing, I printed inverse images in a thick oily substance called bitumen on metal sheets, before pouring liquid latex and allowing the exposed copper to dye into its membrane during the curing process. Latex has an uncanny likeness to skin and has an ability to personify the issue being discussed within the artwork. With this interpretation in mind, ‘skin’ is no longer examined in a private realm but becomes a broader social tissue of shared experiences where my research is stored. Uncanny materials such as snakeskin are also preferred materials.
“Other Skins” by Grace Ryan
Can you describe your creative process from the initial concept to the final piece?
My creative process is constantly changing and evolving depending on the piece at hand, but it always starts with reading and research. I’m incredibly interested in history and mythology. All my works find inspiration from ancient symbolism, folklore, or religious and biblical tales. Once I land on a concept, the work focuses on moments of metamorphosis. I’m indebted to the idea of the hybrid as a vessel for transgression, so manipulation and transformation are inherent to my creative process. The notion of the gaze is also at the forefront of my mind when I imagine a finished piece. How is the piece going to be observed and what elements will be focused on? Because my work is characterised by hybridity, the revealing/ concealing notion of what I leave in place and what I take away and replace with something foreign is always at play in my mind. If you look at the gendered politics of the gaze, women are frequently visually positioned as objects of heterosexual male desire. I aim to obstruct that gaze. There is the fantasy of what the viewer wants to see, but ultimately I am in control of that.
What messages or emotions do you aim to convey through your current works?
I aim to convey emotions ranging from desire, fragility, tension, and repulsion, to fertility. I do this by utilising the attraction/ repulsion dichotomy. All materials and motifs I use in my work are solely connected to the feminine. The viewer is invited to follow the line of association these materials and objects trigger and confront the characteristics which we associate with women. These characteristics range from being domestic, fertile, seductive and sexualised, or fetishized and tainted with temptation. The introduction of the dichotomy is apparent with the coming together of materials and forms that evoke a sense of sensuality and familiarity with those that evoke feelings of carnality and uncomfortableness. Mixing domesticated objects or sexualised clothing items with draped and peeled animal skins is anything but normal. Yet, when we go back through ancient folklore, biblical stories, even modern advertisements, these items and materials are constantly linked to femininity. The thing about grotesquery and repulsion is, that even though as humans we don’t find the sensation of visually absorbing it is enjoyable, there is a particular curiosity and wonder that surrounds it. The subversive use of non-traditional materials evokes a more profound response to the work, sometimes leaving the audience puzzled, trying to pin down the meaning in the visual paradox. There is an invitation to the viewer to explore their visual and emotional responses to what our culture considers undesirable. To question what we see as treasured or repulsive? What things do we assign value to and what things make us uncomfortable? And most importantly where do these feelings originate from?
How do you decide on the themes and subjects of your artwork?
I don’t usually make a definitive decision to interrogate one theme in my artwork. Subjects come about naturally through trial and testing different materials and reading extracts from different sources. My work has always centred around the issue of gender and female subjectivity, but I feel I take an alternative feminist approach to my making, focusing on the ubiquity of material culture and the consumption of femme-coded objects in society. I think my work is undeniably rooted in the realm of the uncanny, and is a constant push and pull between attraction and repulsion. I regularly turn to the regenerative power of the grotesque to challenge patriarchal symbol systems and mainstream taste values.
How do you feel your art is received by different audiences?
While my works are somewhat ambiguous and allow for various readings, they all allude to issues of female subjectivity and gender expectations. Although my experience growing up in Ireland will vary greatly from another person somewhere else in the world, I believe the materials chosen in my works have universal elements. Snakes and cows have been linked to female embodiment culturally worldwide for centuries, the same goes for many clothing items. What generation, background ect you are from will ultimately determine how the work relates to you. I can imagine women and femme-identifying audiences will more likely follow the line of the association presented with these materials, as they are materials and objects tied to their womanhood. Male viewers may notice a blatant perversion but may be confused at the new altered states presented to them. Nonetheless, these pieces aim to provoke, and with confusion comes an urge to inquire and solve.
“Swamp Nymph” by Grace Ryan
Can you tell us about your experiences exhibiting your work in galleries or shows?
I have been really fortunate to be included in a number of exhibitions in the past year since graduating. Exhibiting in IMMA was a huge pinch-me moment. Getting to work with a team of respected curators in such a prestigious environment was an amazing learning experience that I’m hugely grateful for. I also got the chance to exhibit in The Library Project in Temple Bar alongside printmakers from Black Church Print Studio and Graphic Studio. The curator commissioned me to make a large-scale new piece of work so that was a fun experience.
What are your short-term and long-term goals as an artist?
Short term, I am happy to continue creating with access to my studio and printmaking studio spaces, hopefully with a solo show on the cards within the next year or two. Long term I think it would be most artists’ dream, to make art full-time and be able to financially support myself within the Irish art scene. I believe this would seem more achievable if more cultural hubs and artist studios were more affordable and accessible than they are at the moment.
What projects or themes are you excited to tackle next?
I will be spending the winter at an artist residency in Lisbon. I’m really looking forward to just concentrating on making work for a two-month period with no distractions. The location of the residency seems to be really interesting, it is a post-industrial/ rural site. I’m really excited to see what will come out of it. It’s always nice to create in a new environment as well.
Photo credits: Peter Joseph Smith, Leon Farrell