About
Stephen Burke is an Irish artist and curator working between Dublin and Glasgow. He graduated with an MA in painting from the Glasgow School of Art in 2018. He is a recipient of the Gilbert Bayes Award for early career sculptors from the Royal Society of Sculptors, the Agility Award from the Arts Council of Ireland and recently completed a large scale sculptural piece for the UNESCO heritage site Volklingen Ironworks in Germany. 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 studies and responds to the frenzy of city spaces, examining the ways people shape and are shaped by their surroundings. Through both public intervention and studio-based works, he aims to question public space as fixed or unchanging, encouraging viewers to reflect on their own relationship with these spaces.
At the heart of his practice is the contest for space in cities, driven by conflicting interests and priorities. Public space was once intended to be an open and democratic place for everybody but has increasingly been transformed into a standardised, controlled environment as state institutions prioritise security and regulation, a phenomenon Michel Foucault described as the "disciplinary society."
A central focus of Stephen’s work is defensive architecture, designed to restrict the free movement of people in cities. This aspect reflects his interest in how urban design connects with broader cultural and social narratives. Through his practice, he hopes to invite a more human, relatable perspective on these issues, inviting conversation on how we are effected by the spaces we inhabit.