Biography
Linda Shevlin is a visual artist and curator based in Co. Roscommon, Ireland. Her projects look at the complexities of modernity’s effects on land and the socio-cultural landscape of her environment. Her recent work has drawn attention to the role that certain historical/mythological tropes and characteristics have played in popular culture. Using exhibitions, film, and installations she creates situations that explore the borders of fact, fiction and reality.
She has been the recipient of the Arts Council of Ireland’s Visual Arts Curatorial Residency award for three consecutive years from 2013-2016. In 2014 she produced a series of events and exhibitions in County Roscommon including a newly commissioned work by Sean Lynch; The Workers, a retrospective of the Art@Work project, featuring Michelle Browne, Gareth Kennedy and Elaine Reynolds and The Workers symposium with contributions from Grizedale Arts and others. In 2015 she is developing a series of situations that will challenge the conventions of working in traditional gallery contexts. The regional visual art programme will take a nomadic approach to making and exhibiting that will involve working with non-arts spaces around the County including museums and parks. Ultimately reflecting on the importance of rural visual art spaces as discursive sites for non-instrumental forms of thought and action.
In 2012 she was awarded one of two inaugural residencies under the Spark Project funded through Leitrim Arts Office & Enterprise Board in partnership with the Arts Council of Ireland. The work produced through this residency was exhibited at The LAB, Dublin in 2014. Other recent exhibitions include Crystal Palace, Breezeblock, Sydney (2014); LOCAL, The Dock, Leitrim (2014); Supernature, Galway Arts Centre (2013); Tulca Festival, Galway, curated by Megs Morley (2011); Circadian, Leitrim Sculpture Centre (2010); Social Capital, curated by Claire McAree, The Dock, Co. Leitrim (2009) and Crave, Cross Gallery, Dublin (2008).
Recent screenings of her films include Camper, TRUCK Space, Calgary, Canada (2013); Interchange, CEFA, Philadelphia, USA (2012); Surface Shorts, Surface Gallery, Nottingham, UK (2011) and Falling Awake Patna Museum, India (2010).
In 2009 Linda completed an MA in Visual Arts Practices through IADT and in 2010, was appointed to the Board of Directors of Visual Artists Ireland. In 2015 she will take up the role of Chairperson of the Board.
Curatorial Statement
My curatorial concerns centre around the production and dissemination of work in rural contexts, how artists make and present work and the support mechanisms that enable its production and also it’s migration beyond the environs in which it was created. Favouring projects that can be developed through dialogical and collaborative approaches, my projects explore community identity, focusing on marginalised or under-represented rural communities.
My interest lies in lesser-known aspects of history, their intersection with the present and how conceptual traditions in art can be unpicked through research in archaeology, history and ethnography. By presenting the work of artists who bring into play memory, hearsay, oral and archival history so as to construct new readings of the past, my curatorial projects aims to lay emphasis on the idea that the visual is an assimilatory process continuously at work in the construction of cultural, political, personal, and national identities.