Join us for an illustrated talk as part of the Basic Talks programme.
Join us for a talk with artist Judy Carroll Deeley. Carroll Deeley is a professional artist living and working in Dublin, Ireland. She is passionate about ideas, people, the environment, economic and social change, and the home as a private space but also in the sense of the Earth being our home. Her art practice encompasses painting, drawing, collage, mixed media, installation, and collaborative projects.
Carroll Deeley explores the complex issue of how human commercial activity affects our environment. In her landscapes of mine sites in Ireland and abroad, she hopes to catch the terrible, ethereal beauty of lands altered through mining. She was the main project artist for the international Study ‘Post Extractivist Legacies and Landscapes: Humanities, Artistic and Activist Responses’ in collaboration with UCD’S Humanities Institute from 2022 to 2024. (www.ucd.ie/humanities/research/chciglobalhumanitiesinstitute2023/)
During this Study she participated in research trips to mine sites in Estonia, South Africa and Ireland. She made presentations in Tallin University, the Museum of Literature Ireland, the Humanities Institute in UCD, and in Witwatersrand University, Johannesburg.
She gave the keynote talk in MoLI for the Study’s Arts Evening to visiting academics, and exhibited her Estonian mining paintings (https://youtu.be/Z4WQjg7xLTY)
Her work, which formed the main artistic response to the Post-Extractivist Legacies and Landscapes Study, was exhibited in the exhibition ‘Landings’ in the Humanities Institute in May 2024. UCD acquired four of her mining paintings for their permanent art collection.
At the end of her collaboration with UCD’s Humanities Institute, she continued her research into the historic lead and zinc mine site at Glendalough, Co. Wicklow. In her solo show Mine Lands: Glendalough and Glendasan in Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray from 22nd February to 10th May 2025, she offers a juxtaposition of the area’s historical, religious and industrial heritage. Painting what she terms ‘popular scenes’, the works are informed by the artist’s deep knowledge of the valleys through her years of hiking and ‘slow walking’ in a landscape we tend to think of as wild, though it has been worked and managed for hundreds of years. Art historian, Dr Angela Griffith, wrote about this work in the New Hibernia Review (Summer Volume 28 No. 2. 2024). Griffith also wrote the essay ‘…terrible beauty…’ which accompanies the show (Mermaid Pamphlet). A feature about this work will also appear in the environmental issue of the academic journal ‘Resistance’ (USA) in Autumn 2025.
Following her collaboration with UCD’s Humanities Institute, Carroll Deeley continued her research into gold mining in South Africa through participation in an international UCD-led Critical Theory & Creative Praxis Reading Group. Her solo show Gold Mine, Gauteng, South Africa, on the theme of the acute problem of acid mine drainage in Gauteng Province, opens in Custom House Studios & Gallery on 1st May 2025.
In 2023 she collaborated with curator Valeria Ceregini and artists from Balbriggan on How It’s Made: Meitheall – A Creative Call for Climate Action. She exhibited paintings and engaged in a public discussion in Balbriggan Library about the mining origin of many consumer goods with Ceregini and with scientist and inventor Dr. John Gallagher (TCD). In 2024 she collaborated with two different disciplined artists for Artnetdlr’s ‘Crosscurrents’, curated by Claire Halpin for DLR Lexicon Gallery, Dun Laoghaire. The result, a multi-media artwork titled ‘Harmony in Discord’ sold on the Opening Night.
Following a busy period of collaborating and exhibiting, Carroll Deeley is keen to turn her attention to a research project initiated during Covid, with the working title ‘Women, Work and Leisure’. This is a painting and mixed media project which is rooted in local and labour history. The project looks at one inner-city Dublin family’s efforts to eke out a living throughout the 20th century in a discriminatory employment-legislation environment. Research is based on original source materials – documents, objects and photographs. Secondary sources include factories, shops and offices, the Irish Labour History Society’s Museum, Government sources, books and films. The artist intends to re-establish contact with Dublin City Historian Dr Mary Muldowney, who has written books and articles about this topic, and who has been supportive of the project.
Judy Carroll Deeley holds a BA (Hons) in Fine Art (Painting) from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin (2008) and an MA (Hons) in Visual Art Practices from the Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin (2011). She is a recipient of Arts Council of Ireland Awards (2021 and 2022) and is part of the artists collectives AtHomeStudios and Artnetdlr. Her work is held in private and public collections including University College Dublin, Villanova University, Wicklow County Council, The Central Bank, and the Office of Public Works.
Free, book or come on the day subject to availability.
Basic Talks is a series of talks with leading contemporary practitioners, taking place at the Hugh Lane Gallery. Curated by Basic Space in partnership with Hugh Lane Gallery, BASIC TALKS is a platform for lectures, workshops, presentations, and performances. Speakers include artists, curators, writers, and critics who will generate discourse on producing, framing and exhibiting art. BASIC TALKS is a collaboration between Basic Space and the Hugh Lane Gallery, exploring alternatives in the dissemination of contemporary art and its discourses.
