Study Morning: More Power to You Sarah Purser A Force for Irish Art

Logan Sisley was born in Aotearoa New Zealand, where he studied art history at the University of Otago, Dunedin, and at the University of Auckland. He moved to Scotland in 2000 and worked for the National Library of Scotland, the National Galleries of Scotland and Edinburgh College of Art. From 2007 he was Exhibitions Curator at Hugh Lane Gallery, where he has been Acting Head of Collections since 2018. He is the curator of MORE POWER TO YOU, Sarah Purser: A Force for Irish Art.

Dr Hannah Baker was an Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholar who completed her PhD at Trinity College at the beginning of 2024. Her thesis examines the life and work of the Irish artist, social reformer and suffragist Sarah Cecilia Harrison. In 2017, Hannah completed an MPhil in The History of Art and Architecture (Art + Ireland) at Trinity and won the Crookshank Glin prize for the best dissertation submitted that year. Hannah’s publications include: ‘Sarah Cecilia Harrison and the Slade School of Fine Art,’ in Sarah Cecilia Harrison (1863-1941): Artist, Social Campaigner and City Councillor. Edited by Margarita Cappock, Dublin City Council, 2022; and ‘The Irish Afterlife of Eva Gonzales,’ in Discover Manet and Eva Gonzales. Edited by Sarah Herring and Emma Capron. London: National Gallery Global Ltd, 2022; and the recent publication ‘A Parisian Enclave on Dublin’s Grand Canal’, in the exhibition catalogue MORE POWER TO YOU: Sarah Purser, a Force for Irish Art, Hugh Lane Gallery.

Lian Bell is an artist working across artforms, who also supports other artists, and designs acts of community-making. With a background in scenography, cultural project management, and social activism, she has worked over the past 25+ years with some of the most significant arts organisations and contemporary performance makers in Ireland. Whether making material-based work, writing texts, or shaping intangible encounters, all aspects of Lian’s practice overlap aesthetically and ethically. She studied at Trinity College Dublin, Central St Martin’s in London, and the National College of Art and Design, and has received numerous awards for her work to date. Lian Bell will present Doubles: a new archive. This piece was developed in response to archival research into An Túr Gloine, and comprises a text with accompanying glasswork. It seeks to intertwine the real lives of three distinct pairs of women who are connected through their relationships to the site of the stained glass workshop in Pembroke Street Upper. Doubles conjures an archive of this relationship into being. The text has been selected as a runner up for the National Gallery of Ireland’s 2024 Sarah Cecilia Harrison Essay Prize.

Dr David Caron studied Visual Communication at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, to which he returned as lecturer and later as Head of Department. The focus of his PhD research at Trinity College Dublin was the stained glass artist Michael Healy and the artists of An Túr Gloine. David was one of the three compilers of the first edition of the Gazetteer of Irish Stained Glass in 1988, and was editor of the revised and expanded edition in 2021. He is a regular contributor to the Irish Arts Review writing on aspects of stained glass, and his most recent publication was a monograph on Michael Healy which was published last year. David is currently writing a book on Dublin’s stained glass heritage.

Hilary Pyle is a graduate of TCD, Cambridge University, Litt.D NUI. Has published poetry and art criticism as well as biographies of Jack B.Yeats, Sadhbh TrÍnseach, Susan Mitchell, and catalogue raisonné of the work of Jack B.Yeats. Assistant Curator in the Ulster Museum, Belfast; Curator in National Gallery, Dublin. Besides the Irish Cultural Revival and the work of 20^th century women artists, her chief preoccupation­ has been with modern and post-modern Irish art.  She has curated exhibitions in Ireland and abroad, including the Cork Rosc 75, Contemporary Diversity exhibitions, and Jack B. Yeats in Monaco, Yeats Curator Emeritus NGI, HRHA.

Dr Róisín Kennedy is an Art Historian and Curator and Assistant Professor School of Art History and Cultural Policy at UCD. Her research focuses on the critical reception of modern art in Ireland, the role and function of art writing post 1880, censorship and on the position of women as artists and subjects in modern art.  She is former curator of the state collection at Dublin Castle and former Yeats Curator at the National Gallery of Ireland. She has published widely on Irish art, including most recently Art and the Nation State. The Reception of Modern Art in Ireland, Liverpool University Press, 2021 and (as editor) Visualizing the Celtic Revival. The Arts and Crafts Movement in Ireland. Selected Writings by Nicola Gordon Bowe, published by Four Courts Press, 2024.