Conor Kelly (born Cork, IRL 1980) is an artist and emergent researcher. His research spans a range of practices within contemporary fine art including painting, sculpture, installation art, text and the moving image and explores encounters with the natural world and how the constituent agents and sites of these encounters are traced through the natural sciences and material culture.
Current research interests include human/animal encounters, the exploration of the animal as metaphor, the ‘anthropomorphic embrace’ within contemporary fine art practice and notions of alterity in the representation of animal and plant lives.
Previous projects have explored the disruption of dominant representational systems and themes of alterity through fine art painting, sculpture and installation art. Public exhibitions (including 'The Hrönir (Jerks, Buffoons & Pests)' (2019) Platform Arts Belfast and 'Daddy in the Algorithm' (2017) Queens Park Railway Club) have threaded human and animal stories to create temporary environments that embraced a delay or upending of the ’grid of identities, similitudes, and analogies‘ (Foucault 1994) to which our material culture is accustomed. Methodologies included the development of painting installations that explored and questioned the extent of the agencies claimed by WJT Mitchell in ‘What Do Pictures Want?’ (2005) (ie: the ‘vital signs’ in pictures; ‘agency, motivation, autonomy, aura, fecundity’ of images, ‘not merely signs for living things but signs as living things’) and critic Isabelle Graw’s assertion that painting functions as a ‘thinking subject’ in 'Thinking Through Painting: Reflexivity and Agency Beyond the Canvas' (2012).
Conor has exhibited his work nationally and internationally, including; The Hrönir (Jerks, Buffoons & Pests), Platform Arts, Belfast (2019); Glasshouse, Glasgow Botanic Gardens, Glasgow International Festival (2018) (group exhibition); Pithecia Pithecia Pithecia Pithecia HilbertRaum, Berlin (2017); Daddy In The Algorithm, Queens Park Railway Club, Glasgow (2017); Culte Cargo (with Kari Stewart) Voidoid Archive, Glasgow (2016) (2-person exhibition); Do U Feel Like We Do? Intermedia CCA, Glasgow (2014); True Places Never Are, Youghal, Cork (2014) (group exhibition); Cryptids, Glasgow Project Room (with Liam Allan, Amelia Bywater, Luke Collins, Nick Evans and Shireen Taylor) (2014)(curator); Things go Dark (group exhibition with Fiona Burke, Michael Canning, David Godbold, Conor Kelly, Elizabeth Magill, Eoin McHugh, Stephen McKenna, Alison Pilkington & Jennifer Trouton) The Model, Sligo (2014); Pentimentos and Soda, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh (2013); Golden Years, Glasgow Project Room (2012); The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World, SWG3, Glasgow (with Mark Briggs and Jim Colquhoun) (2012); Lampara Descomunal, Kunstverein Arnsberg (2011); Haunt, The Old Hairdressers, Glasgow (group exhibition) (2011); Overseas – Jahresgaben 2011, Kunstverein Arnsberg (group exhibition) (2011) SAM DEROUNIAN ALEX IMPEY FLORRIE JAMES CONOR KELLY GRAHAM KELLY KARI ROBERTSON TESSA LYNCH CHARLOTTE PRODGER MICHAEL SMITH, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow (group exhibition) (2011); Exeter Contemporary Open 2011, Exeter Phoenix Gallery, Exeter (2011); Turn It On Again, SWG3 Projects, Glasgow International Festival (3-person exhibition with Niall MacDonald and Emmett Walsh) (2010); Saltwater, The Tall Ship, Glasgow Harbour, Glasgow International Festival (group exhibition) (2010); Say What What Way, Shopat34 Artist-run-space, London (2010); Open West 2010, Summerfield Gallery, University of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham (group exhibition) (2010); Posthumous Hummus, A.Vermin, Glasgow (3-person exhibition) (2010); Arts Council of Northern Ireland - Recent Acquisitions, The Braid Mid-Antrim Museum, Ballymena, Northern Ireland (2009); The Revolutionary Haircut, Glasgow Project Room (2009), How to Manage When Everything is a Priority, The Grace and Clark Fyfe Gallery, Glasgow School of Art (group exhibition) (2009).
CV
Education
2008 MFA, Glasgow School of Art.
2002 BA(Hons) Fine & Applied Arts, University of Ulster, Belfast.
Solo Exhibition
2019 The Hrönir, Platform Arts, Belfast.
2017 Pithecia Pithecia Pithecia Pithecia, HilbertRaum, Berlin.
2017 Daddy In The Algorithm, Queens Park Railway Club, Glasgow.
2014 Do U Feel Like We Do? Intermedia, CCA, Glasgow.
2013 Pentimentos and Soda, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh.
2012 Conor Kelly’s Golden Years, Glasgow Project Room.
2011 Lampara Descomunal, Kunstverein Arnsberg.
2009 The Revolutionary Haircut, Glasgow Project Room.
2007 A Brief History Of Wormroot, Engine Room Gallery, Belfast.
2004 Conor Kelly, Engine Room Gallery, Belfast.
Selected Group Exhibition
2022
I've never met anyone quite like you before, Queens Park Railway Club, Glasgow.
2018
Glasshouse, Glasgow Botanic Gardens, Glasgow International Festival.
2016
In Place (with Kari Stewart & Dan Monks) Tara St, Dublin.
Culte Cargo, (with Kari Stewart) Voidoid Archive, Glasgow.
2015
Member’s Show, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow.
Queens Park Music Club (interactive publication), Queens Park Railway Club, Glasgow.
2014
Cryptids, Glasgow Project Room (with Liam Allan, Amelia Bywater, Luke Collins, Nick Evans and Shireen Taylor) (curator).
Vision & Values / Member’s Show, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow.
Things go Dark (with Fiona Burke, Michael Canning, David Godbold, Conor Kelly, Elizabeth Magill, Eoin McHugh, Stephen McKenna, Alison Pilkington, Jennifer Trouton.) The Model, Sligo.
.
2013
Nuggets, Voidoid Archive, Glasgow.
Prismism / Member’s Show, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow.
2012
Tattooed Tear, Malgras Naudet Gallery, Manchester.
P.D.A. Curtain Showroom, The Telfer Gallery, Glasgow.
The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World, SWG3 Gallery, Glasgow. (with Mark Briggs and Jim Colquhoun)
2011
Haunt, The Old Hairdressers, Glasgow.
Overseas – Jahresgaben 2011, Kunstverein Arnsberg.
SAM DEROUNIAN ALEX IMPEY FLORRIE JAMES CONOR KELLY GRAHAM KELLY KARI ROBERTSON TESSA LYNCH CHARLOTTE PRODGER MICHAEL SMITH, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow.
Exeter Contemporary Open 2011, Exeter Phoenix Gallery, Exeter.
Members show, Transmissions Gallery, Glasgow.
2010
muhl-tuh-fair-ee-uhs, SunBear Gallery, Edinburgh.
Must I Paint You A Picture? Members Show, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow.
Turn It On Again, SWG3 Projects, Glasgow International Festival.
Saltwater, The Tall Ship, Glasgow Harbour, Glasgow International Festival.
Say What What Way, Shopat34 Artist-run-space, London.
Open West 2010, Summerfield Gallery, University of Gloucestershire,
Cheltenham.
2009
Posthumous Hummus, A.Vermin, Glasgow.
Arts Council of Northern Ireland - Recent Acquisitions, The Braid Mid-Antrim Museum, Ballymena, Northern Ireland.
Disparition, Zero Station, Portland, ME, U.S.A.
How to Manage When Everything is a Priority, The Grace and Clark Fyfe Gallery, Glasgow School of Art.
2008
Jahresgaben 2008, Kunstverein Arnsberg, Arnsberg.
Old And New, Pentagon Gallery, Glasgow.
And So It Goes, Artnews Projects, Berlin.
MFA Degree Show, Tramway, Glasgow.
Flock GLASGOW-TLV, Bezalel Gallery, Tel Aviv.
Arts Council of Northern Ireland - Recent Acquisitions, The Carnegie Centre, Larne.
2007
The Weirding and the Uncanny, Glasgow School of Art.
MFA Interim Show, Glasgow School of Art.
Student Exhibition, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh.
Curator
2014 Cryptids, Glasgow Project Room
Residency/Artist Talk/Performance
2017 Segue, Performance at QPRC (with Kari Stewart and Dan Monks).
2016 Performance, Voidoid Archive (with Dan Monks).
2015 Artist’s Talk, Sligo Institute of Technology.
2014 Pecha Kucha, Glasgow School of Art.
2014 Artist’s Talk, Things go Dark, Symposium, The Model, Sligo.
2013 New Work Scotland Programme, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh.
2013 Artist’s talk at Glasgow School of Art.
2011 Artist’s talk at University of Ulster, Belfast.
2010 Artist’s talk at Transmission Gallery, Glasgow (with Anna Tanner).
2009 Void Residency at Curfew Tower, Cushendall, Northern Ireland.
2007 A Shoal of Mackeral Artist Book Launch, CCA, Glasgow.
Award
2014 Creative Scotland Artist Development Bursary
2013 New Work Scotland Programme, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh.
2010 Scottish Arts Council/Creative Scotland Artist’s Development Bursary
2010 Culture & Sport Glasgow Visual Arts Grant Scheme
2009 Culture & Sport Glasgow Visual Arts Grant Scheme
2006 Mackendrick Scholarship (Glasgow School of Art)
Collection
The Arts Council of Northern Ireland
The Carvill Group
Collection of Andrea and Johannes Teiser
Press/Review
Adam Benmakhlouf ‘Conor Kelly @ Queenspark Railway Club, The Skinny, 24/02/2017.
Mareike Maack ‘Abstrakte Malerei und Kunst aus dem Scanner’ Westfälische Rundschau, Nr 275, 25/11/2011.
Gaby Decker ‘Schichten eines Künstlers’ Sauerland Kurier, 27/11/2011.
Talitha Kotzé ‘Must I Paint You A Picture ?’ The List (Issue 660), 2 July 2010.
Sean P Feeny ‘Memorializing Roger Casement’ Donegal News, No144, Monday, August 31st, 2009.
Liz Shannon ‘Glasgow School of Art MFA Degree Show’ The List, Issue 605, Jun-Jul 2008.
Slavka Sverakova ‘Belfast 3-13 September 2007’ Circa 122, Winter 2007.
Jenny Lee ‘Distance wins the day’ The Irish News, 23rd August 2003