About
Stephen Burke is an Irish artist and curator working between the UK and Ireland. He graduated with an MA in painting from the Glasgow School of Art in 2018. He is a recipient of the Agility Award from the Arts Council of Ireland in 2022 & 2023, the Open Fund for Individuals from Creative Scotland and was nominated for the Ingram Prize in 2023. Stephen is the founder of the social media platform Post vandalism which explores the aesthetics and concepts of graffiti, protest and resistance and fosters support from a wide international community. This project inspired the most recent edition of Kunstforum International, the most renouned specialist journal for contemporary art in Germany. Burke also co-founded the London based curatorial collective Pigeon Park, which organizes exhibitions in industrial spaces. This project was created in response to the post-pandemic threat posed to artists’ working conditions in the wake of the Covid crisis.
Stephen's work explores the interplay of resistance, protest, and power dynamics within urban landscapes, it is a depiction of public space as a contested arena. This often centres on the ubiquitous elements that comprise our constructed environment such as security architecture, tactile tiles or the unintentionally painterly efforts of graffiti removal teams. What these ideas have in common is that they serve as tangible representation of control and dominance, imposed upon the social fabric. They delineate spaces, censor ideas, constrain movement, and precipitate conflicts both local and global in nature.
Through his work, Stephen speaks on the immediate impact of these barriers, both physical and painted, on our urban surroundings, through the rapid and gross transformations in form and surface textures of fences, walls and tiles, presenting the tensions that exist in our cities. His work serves as a poignant commentary on the evolving relationship between humanity and the built environment, shedding light on the complex dynamics of power and control that shape our collective existence.
Stefanobardsley@gmail.com