Chronic Connections 2024 – Participating Artists Announced

We’re delighted to share that the participating artists of this year’s Chronic Connections networking programme are: Keely McLavin, Lauren Martin, Magda Biedka, Niamh Gibbons, Paul McGrane, Róisín Coyle, Tobi Balogun and Tree McCaul.

About Chronic Connections: Networking for sick and disabled artists
Chronic Collective and Fire Station Artists’ Studios have gathered a panel of nationally recognised curators who have a close interest and practice in inclusion and access to participate in the speed curating event and in studio visits with up to 8 visual artists with disabilities/chronic illnesses in 2024.  

The 2024 Networking Programme curators are: Clodagh Boyce (Curator at PS2), Iarlaith Ní Fheorais (Curator & Writer), Maolíosa Boyle (Director of Rua Red and an independent Curator), Michael Hill (Programme Curator at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin)

About the Artists

Keely McLavin
I am an Irish multidisciplinary visual artist; my practice is deeply rooted in exploring womanhood and the lived experiences of women within patriarchal societies. My work seeks to unravel the complexities of language and communication, understanding how these tools can simultaneously educate and perpetuate misogynistic ideals. Through my art, I strive to subvert the language traditionally used to marginalize women, transforming it into a medium of empathetic protest that speaks to the collective experiences of women across time and space.
My approach is research-based, often beginning with historical evidence that ties contemporary issues to their long-standing roots. This method allows me to emphasize the persistence of the struggles that women face, illustrating that these challenges are not new, but rather deeply ingrained in our societal fabric. My work spans various mediums, including screen printing, drawing, sculpture, photography, and text, each carefully chosen to contribute to the narrative I aim to build.

Lauren Martin
Lauren is a mixed media Artist and Community Arts facilitator from Belfast.
Lauren creates between sculpture, digital illustration and painting, exploring the relationship between the impact of ill health and endurance in suffering. Her role as a Community Arts facilitator heavily influences her own personal work. Working with organisations such as Northern Ireland Children’s Hospice.
She specialises in working with individuals living with disabilities and creates work to tell their story. She uses discarded pieces of material or objects to create new pieces of work and give them a new purpose; challenging the idea of usefulness in our society.
In 2024 she was awarded the University of Atypical Deaf/ Disabled Artist Fund through Arts Council. In this project she will explore her neurological condition and how Kintsugi can relate to her neurological disorder.

Magda Biedka
Magda is a Polish born artist living and working in Ireland.
She trained in ceramics at the Limerick School of Art and Design, and she holds an MA in Fine Art from TUS University. Biedka’s sculptural work delves into the abstract interplay between people and nature, capturing emotions, memories, and the essence of specific places. Her pieces touch on themes of politics, identity, and mental health, intertwining personal narratives with broader societal concerns.

Niamh Gibbons
Gibbons is a socially engaged artist currently practising in Ireland. Her work references a range of concepts which are often research based and site specific with a deep basis in folklore, heritage and the rural. A native of Mayo, the artist’s work deals with themes of memory, fiction, storytelling and impermanence through the process of film, photography and installation. A recurrent theme in both the artist’s social practice and visual arts practice is the connection to people and place. Whether gathering knowledge and stories through film or community engagement and events, the shared ingredient is people. Speaking through personal histories and heritage,work engages with ideologies of ecofeminism and food sovereignty. Her current practice looks at the local, connection to land, rural knowledge, ecology and cultural diversity.

Paul McGrane
McGrane (b.1991, Dublin) is an artist & curator working in Dublin, Ireland. He graduated from Technological University Dublin in 2015, with a BA in Fine Art. He  worked as co-curator for The Complex Gallery from 2016-2019. His practice is primarily focused on painting and installation.
His interest lies in pushing the boundaries of 2-D painting by creating subtle changes to the exhibition space. Paul creates false walls to sit behind and amongst paintings. These timber walls act as accentuated frames, pushing the paintings into a 3-dimensional realm.
Recent awards include Hang Tough Solo Exhibition Award (2023) and Rua Red  Winter Open Award (2019). Recent exhibitions include Memories Pieced Together, The Complex (2023); I Will Follow You Into The Dark, Rua Red (2023); Páipéar, Hang Tough Gallery (2022); Winter Open Exhibition, Rua Red (2019).
Paul’s work is included in the Office of Public Works, State Art Collection, Forensic Science Labs Ireland, The Law Society of Ireland, and multiple private collections.

Róisín Coyle
Róisín is a visual artist living in Galway. She works with drawing, print, paint, sculpture,sound, film and animation in an exploration of personal narrative and human psychology. In recent years she has been collecting and working with ancient earth pigments from Ireland and other parts of Europe, a deep ongoing process into the resonance of these materials.
She exhibited widely nationally and internationally from 2006 until 2014 including Grace Exhibition Space, New York, Mermaid Arts Centre, Galway International Arts Festival, G126 Artists Run Gallery, Skibbereen Arts Festival. Sounds From A Safe Harbour, Cork, Claremorris Open Exhibition. She is the recipient of numerous awards including Arts Council Ireland and Galway City Council. In 2014 she contracted Chronic Lyme Disease. This illness has led her to explore a slower and more considered approach in her art practice and materials

Tobi Balogun
Oluwatobi Balogun is a multidisciplinary artist, working across Dance, Theatre, Voice and Design. With a background and training across dance, fashion, and art his artistic practice focuses on HipHop as critical pedagogy and Afro-surrealism as methodologies of creation, fixing the lens of practice on black masculinity and cultural sustainability. Through his work he blends traditional and contemporary references to create new realms of freedom, imagination and community. Bringing broader perspectives to the conversation of masculinity, identity and community whilst combining practices of creation, curation, facilitation and performance. Tobi has performed for and created community led performances and projects with many artists/companies such as CoisCeim, Cathy Coughlan, Story of the Sei, Dance Ireland and more.

In 2023, he presented ‘Ara’ a mixed-media Visual Art installation as part of PhotoIreland festival fusing dance, mixed media sculpture and sustainable methods. Representing the work for exhibition as part of Behind the Curtain – Artworks 2024 at the Visual, Carlow as part of a group exhibition alongside Ulla Von Brandenburg’s ‘Underwater Ball’.

Tree McCaul
Tree Mc Caul is an artist based in Dublin. who focuses on illustration performance and sculpture. She recently graduated with a BA in sculpture and expanded practice in NCAD.
Through a combination of sculpture drawing and live performance her work seeks to explore the unique sensations and experiences we each have inside our human bodies that lie outside the scope of theory and language. She is interested in the way the human interoceptive experience is categorized by academia, science and language and thinking about what are the limits of this.
She also runs workshops called the interoceptive play workshop which use mask making and improv theatre to explore abstract sensory and bodily experiences and find ways to communicate them to each other in something other than language.
She has been involved in Dublin Fringe Festival, Toksuba international medallic art project and exhibited work in NCAD Works, the National Gallery and the previous That Social Centre in Phibsboro.