Prof. Philip Napier

Head of the School of Fine Art

Professor Philip Napier is an artist and educator. Currently he is Head of the Fine Art Faculty at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. Napier has worked through art practice in a variety of challenging environments, where a negotiation of the situation, as content, has had a significant bearing on the work engaged and produced. He has developed works within gallery contexts and through time based and permanently sited public projects. Napier works both individually and collaboratively. He is a former Rome scholar, and has represented Ireland at the XXII Sao Paulo Biennial, Brazil, Great Britain at the inaugural Kwangju Biennial and Northern Ireland in the Montreal Biennial. He was the Integrated Arts Coordinator during the redevelopment of the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast. His most recent cycle of works and projects have been utilising a variety of specific visual ‘modules’ which explore dimensions of consumption, starvation, discovery and connection.

In this cycle of work and research I have been taking readings of a doomed 19th Century maritime quest which attempted discover the North West Passage linking Europe to China and India across the frozen tundra of the Canadian Arctic. The Franklin expedition ended in the mystery of neither arriving or returning. However its ships,  HMS Terror and Erebus are entombed in ice somewhere between the hard shoulder, the soft estate and the visual amenity, of an emerging marine superhighway for containerised shipping. The highway  is gradually openning now, due to global warming and the shrinking ice sheet.

The contemporary Canadian Government effort to find the Erebus  & Terror is a means of underwriting sovereignty. The arctic has been the site of successive romantic imaginations, terror and now hard edged economic advantage as the ‘logic of economic connection’ in a globalised culture is irresistable. Both HMS Terror and  HMS Terror have recently been discovered by Canadian Government agencies in the last two years.  Legal entitlement to these wrecks are part of building legal entitlement to areas of the high north.

In practice I have been re negotiating the vehicle of HMS Terror as a means of driving a series of connections and co ordinates beyond ‘the highlighted route’ focussing relationships to discovery, civil recovery and routemaking, referencing  Serres, Gramsci and premiering installed exerts of the unpublished research of Dr Kevin McKenna.

Over the last number of years I have been involved in longer term project based works which have had consistent moments of exhibition and realisation. These projects have expanded conceptions of terror to explore post conflict conditions fusing the particular and specific with the global. The works inhabit known vehicles through which there is a ‘popular’ identification. - A kind of Visual Amenity.

These works have been concerned with the legacies of post conflict landscape, These have been explored as a form of metric using a variety of specific modules to gauge aspects of consumption starvation, distribution, discovery, 

The modules have included the use of the sound and weight of apology,  the module of adapted physical tables and Experian based commercial intelligence,  and the module of the container. I am interested in eventing this research in public and gallery environments and through a series of performative talks, lectures and reports within and beyond educational environments.

Further research across post conflict landscape has recently been pursuing selected narratives across, Belgian, French and American battlefields from WW1 and their associated monumental concrete forms.  A body of field research has led to the development of performance work and interests in reconstructing ideas of post conflict landscapes.  These consolidated artworks  works have been evented in Ireland and shortly in Pittsburgh, USA.

Writing.  Recent articles and publications

Visual Culture Publication (SAGE)    Vikki Bell              
Journal.sagepub.com/doi/abs10.1177/147041291149760

VAI                            Review, Expecting the Terror. Alissa Kleiss
                                  www.aleissakleist.com
                                           
Variant. 43                Joanna Laws
                                  also

Publication               Remembering the Future
                                   Essay by Declan McGonagle.   www.philipnapier .com

TRADE Conference  Performative Presentation ..VAI Review
                                   Papervisualart.com/tag/Philip-Napier

Conference               Dr Liam Kelly. AICA Conference Paraguay.
 The Becoming of Art/The Decommissioning of Art ( A case Study.Philip Napier)
                                   www.aica-paraguay.com/philip-napier 2

Ulster Museum           http:www.facebook.com/ulstermuseumbelfast/videos/1096801550334208/
              
Raw Material  Exhibition. UU Belfast .        
 Dr Naomi Sex. Essay. Introduction to Raw Material Exhibition UU, Belfast

Forthcoming Publications where work is featured
                                            
Ghost Haunted Land       Dr Declan Long  (Author)
                                          Publisher.  Manchester University Press

War in the Visual Arts ( Working Title )
 Essay – An examination of Visual discourse Bloody Sunday, leading  to Conflict resolution. Maebh O’Regan
                                          Publisher – Routeledge

History of Ireland (Working Title)   Ed Tom Bertlett
                                              Art & Architecture (Working Title)
                                              Prof ( Emeritus ) Paula Murphy
                                              Publisher  Cambridge University Press

RECENT PRACTICE

One Person Shows / Activities / Public Works

2016       RAW MATERIAL
               Curated by Feargal O’Malley
               University of Ulster Gallery, Belfast
2012       RECALCULATING
               Curated by Conor McFeeley
               Void Gallery, Derry
2011       UNPACKING THE TERROR
               Curated by Alice Lyons
               The Dock, Carrick on Shannon, Ireland
2010       EXPECTING THE TERROR
               Curated by Feargal O’Malley
               Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast
2010       GAUGE 7  Project and Residency
               In association with Norbert Biba and Robben Island Museum
               Robben Island, Cape Town, South Africa

Public Practices             
                REGENERATE   2006 – 2010
                Working as Carbon Design (in Collaboration with Michael Hogg )                
                ROYAL VICTORIA HOSPITAL REDEVELOPMENT  1997 - 2003
                Working as integrated Arts Consultant and Lead Artist

Selected Group Exhibitions
2017        SO IT IS                                                      
                Curated by John Carson. Exhibition & Residency 
                Mattress Factory
                Pittsburgh, USA
2016        FOLD
                Curated by Alison Pilkington
                Blackchurch Gallery, Dublin                      publication
2015        VANISHING HISTORIES                            publication
                From the Histories Series
                Curated by Peter Richards
                GT Gallery, Belfast.                                     publication
2015        FOAMING AT THE MOUTH
                Curated by Tracey Hanna & Emer Lynch
                Polo Club, Dublin.
2014        PERFORMING POWER
                Dublin Castle, Ireland
                Curated by Michelle Browne
2014        ART OF THE TROUBLES
                Ulster Museum, Belfast.
                & Wolverhampton Art Gallery, UK
                NEARBY FARAWAY
                Curated by Feargal O’Malley
                FEMcWilliam Gallery and Studio                   publication
2011        ARTICULULATE ( performance event)
                Organised by Naomi Sex, Sinead McCann, Alison Pilkington
                Newman House, Dublin
                RE:PUBLIC
                Temple Bar Studios and Gallery
                Dublin
2009        ART AND THE TROUBLES
                Drawn from the Collection of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland
                Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast
2008        A SHOUT IN THE STREET
                From the Collective Histories of Northern Ireland
                Curated by Declan McGonagle                     publication
2007/08   CARBON DESIGN
                CONTEMPORARY ART NORTHERN IRELAND
                BEIAIERLANXIANDAIYISHUZUOPINZHANZUOPINJI
                (In collaboration with Michael Hogg)
                Peoples Republic of China                            publication
2007        CARBON DESIGN
                RE DISCOVER NORTHERN IRELAND
                (In collaboration with Michael Hogg)
                Washington, USA
                GT Gallery, Belfast                                        publication
2006        THE DISEMBODIED EYE
                 From the Collective Histories of Northern Ireland
                 Curated by Dr Liam Kelly

  • Napier performance - articululate 2011

    Napier performance - articululate 2011

  • Img 0799

    Img 0799

  • Screen shot 2015-10-15 at 20.05.04

    Screen shot 2015-10-15 at 20.05.04

  • Screen shot 2017-01-26 at 11.55.16

    Screen shot 2017-01-26 at 11.55.16

  • The road to the future

    The road to the future