Rita Duffy: Republican, Pacifist, Feminist
We investigate the life and career of the Northern Irish artist...
By
Aoife Allen
December 11, 2023
Born in 1959 to a Catholic family in Belfast, artist Rita Duffy experienced first-hand the horrors of Northern Ireland’s Troubles. Her father hailed from the famed Falls Road, an area of Belfast synonymous with the Catholic community; he was one of the few Catholics permitted to work in the city's shipyard. Her mother came from rural Offaly, in the Republic of Ireland. The family lived in the Protestant neighbourhood, Stranmillis, and Duffy was sent to an Irish Catholic secondary school on Falls Road. These two very prominent locations of her childhood were both places where Duffy did not feel like she fitted in.
As an adult, Duffy received a B.A. from the Art and Design Centre, followed by an M.A in Fine Art from the University of Ulster. When at college, the artist preferred to engage in socially engaged figurative painting, and during her summers she spent time in New York City drawing street portraits, her style developing into what the country knows and loves today. Her work is generally seen to be autobiographical and deals with Irish identity, history and politics, often exploring these themes through irony, wit and humour. Duffy’s style is influenced by those of surrealism and magical realism (a style that depicts fantastical events in an otherwise realistic tone). Duffy now lives in Fermanagh with her family and works from her studio located in Ballyconnell, County Cavan, just south of the border. She has intentionally crept to the creative margins of Ulster where she can keep a “gimlet eye on the South” and intentionally away from Belfast's creative scene - yet another place she believed to never have belonged. The artist describes herself as “a republican in the truest sense of the word”, a pacifist and feminist.
In 2005, Rita Duffy was named “Ulster's foremost artist”. Her work features in several major Irish institution's collections such as the Hugh Lane Gallery - which possesses her Sofa (1996), blood red and covered in sharp pins - and the Irish Museum of Modern Art which owns one of her Watchtower paintings which depicts observation sangars of the British Army. Three drawings produced in the 1980s (one of a soldier, one of a ‘kneecapping’ she witnessed on the Falls Road and one of a woman banging bin lids together) were purchased in the mid-2010s by the Imperial War Museum in London. Her art is also held in many public collections such as the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the Ulster Museum in Belfast, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, The Drawing Museum in New York and the Office of Public Works in Dublin. In 2017, Duffy was recognised for her contribution to visual arts in Ireland and elected to Aosdana, Ireland's elected ‘people of the arts’. She held an artist residency at Trinity College Dublin’s Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Institute where she worked on her project The Raft Project (2019), a reaction to Brexit and the border-poll discussion, inspired by Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa (1818-19), as well as the project Anatomy of Hope (2021) which looked at the Covid-19 pandemic.
Duffy first came to prominent public attention in 2005 when she proposed to tow an iceberg from Greenland to Belfast in order to draw attention to the city's links to the Titanic; this was also in an attempt to highlight the frosty impasse of Northern Irish Politics. The mooring of the iceberg and allowing it to thaw was conceived in order to encourage the melting of the frozen political differences, and Duffy stated that a large mountain of ice was the easiest way to represent where the people and government stood; according to her, it was necessary to stop the denial so prevalent in Northern Irish culture and a need to accept what sank them in the first place. Even the proposal of this project was controversial, perhaps resurfacing ghosts that many in the community would rather not have remembered. Of course, this project was somewhat personal to Duffy due to her father's involvement with the Belfast shipyard, but the artist also aimed for the journey of the iceberg to be symbolic, intentionally planning for the route to emulate that of the old Viking road, paying homage to the migration of many who settled in Northern Ireland. The iceberg was also planned to travel down the Western Isles of Scotland, an area that shared a Gaelic language and where Protestant planters migrated from in the 17th century. The community held mixed feelings on the piece; writer Polly Devlin expressed that the artwork would be a wonderful closure, whereas Una Reilly, co-founder of the Belfast Titanic Society understood why Duffy wanted to develop the symbolism of the iceberg, but claimed it was too soon after the tragedy for such an artwork. Although the project was never fully realized, the aims of “Thaw” remained relevant in the art of Duffy throughout her career.
Another of her most iconic artistic ventures, Souvenir Shop (2016) was commissioned by the Irish Government for the centenary of the 1916 Rising, one of nine Arts Council-funded projects for the event. In an old and neglected Georgian manor on North Great Georges Street, Dublin City Center, Duffy set up her installation which featured a range of 50 everyday products displayed in the exhibition. The project was an attempt to subvert and examine Irish identity; it also aimed to examine Irish history from a humorous and poignant, absurd and feminist perspective. Among the items on display were sets of Mexican grave candles that depicted revolutionary hero Patrick Pearse as the Virgin of Guadeloupe, Irish mythological figure Cuchulainn, and hunger striker Bobby Sands. There were also “smuggled cigarettes”, “green diesel” and hand-decorated Easter eggs (the Celtic symbol of rebirth, goodness and fertility) on display. Visitors were even able to purchase vintage-style paper cut-outs "make your own Markievicz" dolls. The exhibition attempted to serve as an antidote to taking the centenary commemorations too seriously and, with this artwork, Duffy aimed to amuse, stimulate, perhaps irritate, but above all intrigue.
Duffy is still an active artist today: her most recent exhibition, Persistent Illusion featured three large-scale works that present themes of planetary crisis and political chaos and finished its showing at Cork’s Crawford Gallery at the end of October. Works entitled Epiphany (2021), Belfast to Byzantium (2022) and Ornithopter (2023), all evoke the children’s tales ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, with the gallery describing Duffy’s ability to “create a Lilliputian neurotic nightmare that goes to the heart of human rights, capitalism, and democracy”. The unsettling, dystopian and violent nature of these pieces is different to the artist's established visual canon, yet still allows them to find their place in her iconic style.
There appears to be no sign of this iconic and well-loved artist slowing down, so keep an eye out for the work of Rita Duffy across the UK and Ireland in the coming year; although nothing has yet been officially announced, we have no doubt that there is much more to come...
Born in 1959 to a Catholic family in Belfast, artist Rita Duffy experienced first-hand the horrors of Northern Ireland’s Troubles. Her father hailed from the famed Falls Road, an area of Belfast synonymous with the Catholic community; he was one of the few Catholics permitted to work in the city's shipyard. Her mother came from rural Offaly, in the Republic of Ireland. The family lived in the Protestant neighbourhood, Stranmillis, and Duffy was sent to an Irish Catholic secondary school on Falls Road. These two very prominent locations of her childhood were both places where Duffy did not feel like she fitted in.
As an adult, Duffy received a B.A. from the Art and Design Centre, followed by an M.A in Fine Art from the University of Ulster. When at college, the artist preferred to engage in socially engaged figurative painting, and during her summers she spent time in New York City drawing street portraits, her style developing into what the country knows and loves today. Her work is generally seen to be autobiographical and deals with Irish identity, history and politics, often exploring these themes through irony, wit and humour. Duffy’s style is influenced by those of surrealism and magical realism (a style that depicts fantastical events in an otherwise realistic tone). Duffy now lives in Fermanagh with her family and works from her studio located in Ballyconnell, County Cavan, just south of the border. She has intentionally crept to the creative margins of Ulster where she can keep a “gimlet eye on the South” and intentionally away from Belfast's creative scene - yet another place she believed to never have belonged. The artist describes herself as “a republican in the truest sense of the word”, a pacifist and feminist.
In 2005, Rita Duffy was named “Ulster's foremost artist”. Her work features in several major Irish institution's collections such as the Hugh Lane Gallery - which possesses her Sofa (1996), blood red and covered in sharp pins - and the Irish Museum of Modern Art which owns one of her Watchtower paintings which depicts observation sangars of the British Army. Three drawings produced in the 1980s (one of a soldier, one of a ‘kneecapping’ she witnessed on the Falls Road and one of a woman banging bin lids together) were purchased in the mid-2010s by the Imperial War Museum in London. Her art is also held in many public collections such as the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the Ulster Museum in Belfast, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, The Drawing Museum in New York and the Office of Public Works in Dublin. In 2017, Duffy was recognised for her contribution to visual arts in Ireland and elected to Aosdana, Ireland's elected ‘people of the arts’. She held an artist residency at Trinity College Dublin’s Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Institute where she worked on her project The Raft Project (2019), a reaction to Brexit and the border-poll discussion, inspired by Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa (1818-19), as well as the project Anatomy of Hope (2021) which looked at the Covid-19 pandemic.
Duffy first came to prominent public attention in 2005 when she proposed to tow an iceberg from Greenland to Belfast in order to draw attention to the city's links to the Titanic; this was also in an attempt to highlight the frosty impasse of Northern Irish Politics. The mooring of the iceberg and allowing it to thaw was conceived in order to encourage the melting of the frozen political differences, and Duffy stated that a large mountain of ice was the easiest way to represent where the people and government stood; according to her, it was necessary to stop the denial so prevalent in Northern Irish culture and a need to accept what sank them in the first place. Even the proposal of this project was controversial, perhaps resurfacing ghosts that many in the community would rather not have remembered. Of course, this project was somewhat personal to Duffy due to her father's involvement with the Belfast shipyard, but the artist also aimed for the journey of the iceberg to be symbolic, intentionally planning for the route to emulate that of the old Viking road, paying homage to the migration of many who settled in Northern Ireland. The iceberg was also planned to travel down the Western Isles of Scotland, an area that shared a Gaelic language and where Protestant planters migrated from in the 17th century. The community held mixed feelings on the piece; writer Polly Devlin expressed that the artwork would be a wonderful closure, whereas Una Reilly, co-founder of the Belfast Titanic Society understood why Duffy wanted to develop the symbolism of the iceberg, but claimed it was too soon after the tragedy for such an artwork. Although the project was never fully realized, the aims of “Thaw” remained relevant in the art of Duffy throughout her career.
Another of her most iconic artistic ventures, Souvenir Shop (2016) was commissioned by the Irish Government for the centenary of the 1916 Rising, one of nine Arts Council-funded projects for the event. In an old and neglected Georgian manor on North Great Georges Street, Dublin City Center, Duffy set up her installation which featured a range of 50 everyday products displayed in the exhibition. The project was an attempt to subvert and examine Irish identity; it also aimed to examine Irish history from a humorous and poignant, absurd and feminist perspective. Among the items on display were sets of Mexican grave candles that depicted revolutionary hero Patrick Pearse as the Virgin of Guadeloupe, Irish mythological figure Cuchulainn, and hunger striker Bobby Sands. There were also “smuggled cigarettes”, “green diesel” and hand-decorated Easter eggs (the Celtic symbol of rebirth, goodness and fertility) on display. Visitors were even able to purchase vintage-style paper cut-outs "make your own Markievicz" dolls. The exhibition attempted to serve as an antidote to taking the centenary commemorations too seriously and, with this artwork, Duffy aimed to amuse, stimulate, perhaps irritate, but above all intrigue.
Duffy is still an active artist today: her most recent exhibition, Persistent Illusion featured three large-scale works that present themes of planetary crisis and political chaos and finished its showing at Cork’s Crawford Gallery at the end of October. Works entitled Epiphany (2021), Belfast to Byzantium (2022) and Ornithopter (2023), all evoke the children’s tales ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, with the gallery describing Duffy’s ability to “create a Lilliputian neurotic nightmare that goes to the heart of human rights, capitalism, and democracy”. The unsettling, dystopian and violent nature of these pieces is different to the artist's established visual canon, yet still allows them to find their place in her iconic style.
There appears to be no sign of this iconic and well-loved artist slowing down, so keep an eye out for the work of Rita Duffy across the UK and Ireland in the coming year; although nothing has yet been officially announced, we have no doubt that there is much more to come...
Born in 1959 to a Catholic family in Belfast, artist Rita Duffy experienced first-hand the horrors of Northern Ireland’s Troubles. Her father hailed from the famed Falls Road, an area of Belfast synonymous with the Catholic community; he was one of the few Catholics permitted to work in the city's shipyard. Her mother came from rural Offaly, in the Republic of Ireland. The family lived in the Protestant neighbourhood, Stranmillis, and Duffy was sent to an Irish Catholic secondary school on Falls Road. These two very prominent locations of her childhood were both places where Duffy did not feel like she fitted in.
As an adult, Duffy received a B.A. from the Art and Design Centre, followed by an M.A in Fine Art from the University of Ulster. When at college, the artist preferred to engage in socially engaged figurative painting, and during her summers she spent time in New York City drawing street portraits, her style developing into what the country knows and loves today. Her work is generally seen to be autobiographical and deals with Irish identity, history and politics, often exploring these themes through irony, wit and humour. Duffy’s style is influenced by those of surrealism and magical realism (a style that depicts fantastical events in an otherwise realistic tone). Duffy now lives in Fermanagh with her family and works from her studio located in Ballyconnell, County Cavan, just south of the border. She has intentionally crept to the creative margins of Ulster where she can keep a “gimlet eye on the South” and intentionally away from Belfast's creative scene - yet another place she believed to never have belonged. The artist describes herself as “a republican in the truest sense of the word”, a pacifist and feminist.
In 2005, Rita Duffy was named “Ulster's foremost artist”. Her work features in several major Irish institution's collections such as the Hugh Lane Gallery - which possesses her Sofa (1996), blood red and covered in sharp pins - and the Irish Museum of Modern Art which owns one of her Watchtower paintings which depicts observation sangars of the British Army. Three drawings produced in the 1980s (one of a soldier, one of a ‘kneecapping’ she witnessed on the Falls Road and one of a woman banging bin lids together) were purchased in the mid-2010s by the Imperial War Museum in London. Her art is also held in many public collections such as the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the Ulster Museum in Belfast, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, The Drawing Museum in New York and the Office of Public Works in Dublin. In 2017, Duffy was recognised for her contribution to visual arts in Ireland and elected to Aosdana, Ireland's elected ‘people of the arts’. She held an artist residency at Trinity College Dublin’s Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Institute where she worked on her project The Raft Project (2019), a reaction to Brexit and the border-poll discussion, inspired by Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa (1818-19), as well as the project Anatomy of Hope (2021) which looked at the Covid-19 pandemic.
Duffy first came to prominent public attention in 2005 when she proposed to tow an iceberg from Greenland to Belfast in order to draw attention to the city's links to the Titanic; this was also in an attempt to highlight the frosty impasse of Northern Irish Politics. The mooring of the iceberg and allowing it to thaw was conceived in order to encourage the melting of the frozen political differences, and Duffy stated that a large mountain of ice was the easiest way to represent where the people and government stood; according to her, it was necessary to stop the denial so prevalent in Northern Irish culture and a need to accept what sank them in the first place. Even the proposal of this project was controversial, perhaps resurfacing ghosts that many in the community would rather not have remembered. Of course, this project was somewhat personal to Duffy due to her father's involvement with the Belfast shipyard, but the artist also aimed for the journey of the iceberg to be symbolic, intentionally planning for the route to emulate that of the old Viking road, paying homage to the migration of many who settled in Northern Ireland. The iceberg was also planned to travel down the Western Isles of Scotland, an area that shared a Gaelic language and where Protestant planters migrated from in the 17th century. The community held mixed feelings on the piece; writer Polly Devlin expressed that the artwork would be a wonderful closure, whereas Una Reilly, co-founder of the Belfast Titanic Society understood why Duffy wanted to develop the symbolism of the iceberg, but claimed it was too soon after the tragedy for such an artwork. Although the project was never fully realized, the aims of “Thaw” remained relevant in the art of Duffy throughout her career.
Another of her most iconic artistic ventures, Souvenir Shop (2016) was commissioned by the Irish Government for the centenary of the 1916 Rising, one of nine Arts Council-funded projects for the event. In an old and neglected Georgian manor on North Great Georges Street, Dublin City Center, Duffy set up her installation which featured a range of 50 everyday products displayed in the exhibition. The project was an attempt to subvert and examine Irish identity; it also aimed to examine Irish history from a humorous and poignant, absurd and feminist perspective. Among the items on display were sets of Mexican grave candles that depicted revolutionary hero Patrick Pearse as the Virgin of Guadeloupe, Irish mythological figure Cuchulainn, and hunger striker Bobby Sands. There were also “smuggled cigarettes”, “green diesel” and hand-decorated Easter eggs (the Celtic symbol of rebirth, goodness and fertility) on display. Visitors were even able to purchase vintage-style paper cut-outs "make your own Markievicz" dolls. The exhibition attempted to serve as an antidote to taking the centenary commemorations too seriously and, with this artwork, Duffy aimed to amuse, stimulate, perhaps irritate, but above all intrigue.
Duffy is still an active artist today: her most recent exhibition, Persistent Illusion featured three large-scale works that present themes of planetary crisis and political chaos and finished its showing at Cork’s Crawford Gallery at the end of October. Works entitled Epiphany (2021), Belfast to Byzantium (2022) and Ornithopter (2023), all evoke the children’s tales ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, with the gallery describing Duffy’s ability to “create a Lilliputian neurotic nightmare that goes to the heart of human rights, capitalism, and democracy”. The unsettling, dystopian and violent nature of these pieces is different to the artist's established visual canon, yet still allows them to find their place in her iconic style.
There appears to be no sign of this iconic and well-loved artist slowing down, so keep an eye out for the work of Rita Duffy across the UK and Ireland in the coming year; although nothing has yet been officially announced, we have no doubt that there is much more to come...
Born in 1959 to a Catholic family in Belfast, artist Rita Duffy experienced first-hand the horrors of Northern Ireland’s Troubles. Her father hailed from the famed Falls Road, an area of Belfast synonymous with the Catholic community; he was one of the few Catholics permitted to work in the city's shipyard. Her mother came from rural Offaly, in the Republic of Ireland. The family lived in the Protestant neighbourhood, Stranmillis, and Duffy was sent to an Irish Catholic secondary school on Falls Road. These two very prominent locations of her childhood were both places where Duffy did not feel like she fitted in.
As an adult, Duffy received a B.A. from the Art and Design Centre, followed by an M.A in Fine Art from the University of Ulster. When at college, the artist preferred to engage in socially engaged figurative painting, and during her summers she spent time in New York City drawing street portraits, her style developing into what the country knows and loves today. Her work is generally seen to be autobiographical and deals with Irish identity, history and politics, often exploring these themes through irony, wit and humour. Duffy’s style is influenced by those of surrealism and magical realism (a style that depicts fantastical events in an otherwise realistic tone). Duffy now lives in Fermanagh with her family and works from her studio located in Ballyconnell, County Cavan, just south of the border. She has intentionally crept to the creative margins of Ulster where she can keep a “gimlet eye on the South” and intentionally away from Belfast's creative scene - yet another place she believed to never have belonged. The artist describes herself as “a republican in the truest sense of the word”, a pacifist and feminist.
In 2005, Rita Duffy was named “Ulster's foremost artist”. Her work features in several major Irish institution's collections such as the Hugh Lane Gallery - which possesses her Sofa (1996), blood red and covered in sharp pins - and the Irish Museum of Modern Art which owns one of her Watchtower paintings which depicts observation sangars of the British Army. Three drawings produced in the 1980s (one of a soldier, one of a ‘kneecapping’ she witnessed on the Falls Road and one of a woman banging bin lids together) were purchased in the mid-2010s by the Imperial War Museum in London. Her art is also held in many public collections such as the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the Ulster Museum in Belfast, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, The Drawing Museum in New York and the Office of Public Works in Dublin. In 2017, Duffy was recognised for her contribution to visual arts in Ireland and elected to Aosdana, Ireland's elected ‘people of the arts’. She held an artist residency at Trinity College Dublin’s Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Institute where she worked on her project The Raft Project (2019), a reaction to Brexit and the border-poll discussion, inspired by Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa (1818-19), as well as the project Anatomy of Hope (2021) which looked at the Covid-19 pandemic.
Duffy first came to prominent public attention in 2005 when she proposed to tow an iceberg from Greenland to Belfast in order to draw attention to the city's links to the Titanic; this was also in an attempt to highlight the frosty impasse of Northern Irish Politics. The mooring of the iceberg and allowing it to thaw was conceived in order to encourage the melting of the frozen political differences, and Duffy stated that a large mountain of ice was the easiest way to represent where the people and government stood; according to her, it was necessary to stop the denial so prevalent in Northern Irish culture and a need to accept what sank them in the first place. Even the proposal of this project was controversial, perhaps resurfacing ghosts that many in the community would rather not have remembered. Of course, this project was somewhat personal to Duffy due to her father's involvement with the Belfast shipyard, but the artist also aimed for the journey of the iceberg to be symbolic, intentionally planning for the route to emulate that of the old Viking road, paying homage to the migration of many who settled in Northern Ireland. The iceberg was also planned to travel down the Western Isles of Scotland, an area that shared a Gaelic language and where Protestant planters migrated from in the 17th century. The community held mixed feelings on the piece; writer Polly Devlin expressed that the artwork would be a wonderful closure, whereas Una Reilly, co-founder of the Belfast Titanic Society understood why Duffy wanted to develop the symbolism of the iceberg, but claimed it was too soon after the tragedy for such an artwork. Although the project was never fully realized, the aims of “Thaw” remained relevant in the art of Duffy throughout her career.
Another of her most iconic artistic ventures, Souvenir Shop (2016) was commissioned by the Irish Government for the centenary of the 1916 Rising, one of nine Arts Council-funded projects for the event. In an old and neglected Georgian manor on North Great Georges Street, Dublin City Center, Duffy set up her installation which featured a range of 50 everyday products displayed in the exhibition. The project was an attempt to subvert and examine Irish identity; it also aimed to examine Irish history from a humorous and poignant, absurd and feminist perspective. Among the items on display were sets of Mexican grave candles that depicted revolutionary hero Patrick Pearse as the Virgin of Guadeloupe, Irish mythological figure Cuchulainn, and hunger striker Bobby Sands. There were also “smuggled cigarettes”, “green diesel” and hand-decorated Easter eggs (the Celtic symbol of rebirth, goodness and fertility) on display. Visitors were even able to purchase vintage-style paper cut-outs "make your own Markievicz" dolls. The exhibition attempted to serve as an antidote to taking the centenary commemorations too seriously and, with this artwork, Duffy aimed to amuse, stimulate, perhaps irritate, but above all intrigue.
Duffy is still an active artist today: her most recent exhibition, Persistent Illusion featured three large-scale works that present themes of planetary crisis and political chaos and finished its showing at Cork’s Crawford Gallery at the end of October. Works entitled Epiphany (2021), Belfast to Byzantium (2022) and Ornithopter (2023), all evoke the children’s tales ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, with the gallery describing Duffy’s ability to “create a Lilliputian neurotic nightmare that goes to the heart of human rights, capitalism, and democracy”. The unsettling, dystopian and violent nature of these pieces is different to the artist's established visual canon, yet still allows them to find their place in her iconic style.
There appears to be no sign of this iconic and well-loved artist slowing down, so keep an eye out for the work of Rita Duffy across the UK and Ireland in the coming year; although nothing has yet been officially announced, we have no doubt that there is much more to come...
Born in 1959 to a Catholic family in Belfast, artist Rita Duffy experienced first-hand the horrors of Northern Ireland’s Troubles. Her father hailed from the famed Falls Road, an area of Belfast synonymous with the Catholic community; he was one of the few Catholics permitted to work in the city's shipyard. Her mother came from rural Offaly, in the Republic of Ireland. The family lived in the Protestant neighbourhood, Stranmillis, and Duffy was sent to an Irish Catholic secondary school on Falls Road. These two very prominent locations of her childhood were both places where Duffy did not feel like she fitted in.
As an adult, Duffy received a B.A. from the Art and Design Centre, followed by an M.A in Fine Art from the University of Ulster. When at college, the artist preferred to engage in socially engaged figurative painting, and during her summers she spent time in New York City drawing street portraits, her style developing into what the country knows and loves today. Her work is generally seen to be autobiographical and deals with Irish identity, history and politics, often exploring these themes through irony, wit and humour. Duffy’s style is influenced by those of surrealism and magical realism (a style that depicts fantastical events in an otherwise realistic tone). Duffy now lives in Fermanagh with her family and works from her studio located in Ballyconnell, County Cavan, just south of the border. She has intentionally crept to the creative margins of Ulster where she can keep a “gimlet eye on the South” and intentionally away from Belfast's creative scene - yet another place she believed to never have belonged. The artist describes herself as “a republican in the truest sense of the word”, a pacifist and feminist.
In 2005, Rita Duffy was named “Ulster's foremost artist”. Her work features in several major Irish institution's collections such as the Hugh Lane Gallery - which possesses her Sofa (1996), blood red and covered in sharp pins - and the Irish Museum of Modern Art which owns one of her Watchtower paintings which depicts observation sangars of the British Army. Three drawings produced in the 1980s (one of a soldier, one of a ‘kneecapping’ she witnessed on the Falls Road and one of a woman banging bin lids together) were purchased in the mid-2010s by the Imperial War Museum in London. Her art is also held in many public collections such as the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the Ulster Museum in Belfast, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, The Drawing Museum in New York and the Office of Public Works in Dublin. In 2017, Duffy was recognised for her contribution to visual arts in Ireland and elected to Aosdana, Ireland's elected ‘people of the arts’. She held an artist residency at Trinity College Dublin’s Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Institute where she worked on her project The Raft Project (2019), a reaction to Brexit and the border-poll discussion, inspired by Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa (1818-19), as well as the project Anatomy of Hope (2021) which looked at the Covid-19 pandemic.
Duffy first came to prominent public attention in 2005 when she proposed to tow an iceberg from Greenland to Belfast in order to draw attention to the city's links to the Titanic; this was also in an attempt to highlight the frosty impasse of Northern Irish Politics. The mooring of the iceberg and allowing it to thaw was conceived in order to encourage the melting of the frozen political differences, and Duffy stated that a large mountain of ice was the easiest way to represent where the people and government stood; according to her, it was necessary to stop the denial so prevalent in Northern Irish culture and a need to accept what sank them in the first place. Even the proposal of this project was controversial, perhaps resurfacing ghosts that many in the community would rather not have remembered. Of course, this project was somewhat personal to Duffy due to her father's involvement with the Belfast shipyard, but the artist also aimed for the journey of the iceberg to be symbolic, intentionally planning for the route to emulate that of the old Viking road, paying homage to the migration of many who settled in Northern Ireland. The iceberg was also planned to travel down the Western Isles of Scotland, an area that shared a Gaelic language and where Protestant planters migrated from in the 17th century. The community held mixed feelings on the piece; writer Polly Devlin expressed that the artwork would be a wonderful closure, whereas Una Reilly, co-founder of the Belfast Titanic Society understood why Duffy wanted to develop the symbolism of the iceberg, but claimed it was too soon after the tragedy for such an artwork. Although the project was never fully realized, the aims of “Thaw” remained relevant in the art of Duffy throughout her career.
Another of her most iconic artistic ventures, Souvenir Shop (2016) was commissioned by the Irish Government for the centenary of the 1916 Rising, one of nine Arts Council-funded projects for the event. In an old and neglected Georgian manor on North Great Georges Street, Dublin City Center, Duffy set up her installation which featured a range of 50 everyday products displayed in the exhibition. The project was an attempt to subvert and examine Irish identity; it also aimed to examine Irish history from a humorous and poignant, absurd and feminist perspective. Among the items on display were sets of Mexican grave candles that depicted revolutionary hero Patrick Pearse as the Virgin of Guadeloupe, Irish mythological figure Cuchulainn, and hunger striker Bobby Sands. There were also “smuggled cigarettes”, “green diesel” and hand-decorated Easter eggs (the Celtic symbol of rebirth, goodness and fertility) on display. Visitors were even able to purchase vintage-style paper cut-outs "make your own Markievicz" dolls. The exhibition attempted to serve as an antidote to taking the centenary commemorations too seriously and, with this artwork, Duffy aimed to amuse, stimulate, perhaps irritate, but above all intrigue.
Duffy is still an active artist today: her most recent exhibition, Persistent Illusion featured three large-scale works that present themes of planetary crisis and political chaos and finished its showing at Cork’s Crawford Gallery at the end of October. Works entitled Epiphany (2021), Belfast to Byzantium (2022) and Ornithopter (2023), all evoke the children’s tales ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, with the gallery describing Duffy’s ability to “create a Lilliputian neurotic nightmare that goes to the heart of human rights, capitalism, and democracy”. The unsettling, dystopian and violent nature of these pieces is different to the artist's established visual canon, yet still allows them to find their place in her iconic style.
There appears to be no sign of this iconic and well-loved artist slowing down, so keep an eye out for the work of Rita Duffy across the UK and Ireland in the coming year; although nothing has yet been officially announced, we have no doubt that there is much more to come...
Born in 1959 to a Catholic family in Belfast, artist Rita Duffy experienced first-hand the horrors of Northern Ireland’s Troubles. Her father hailed from the famed Falls Road, an area of Belfast synonymous with the Catholic community; he was one of the few Catholics permitted to work in the city's shipyard. Her mother came from rural Offaly, in the Republic of Ireland. The family lived in the Protestant neighbourhood, Stranmillis, and Duffy was sent to an Irish Catholic secondary school on Falls Road. These two very prominent locations of her childhood were both places where Duffy did not feel like she fitted in.
As an adult, Duffy received a B.A. from the Art and Design Centre, followed by an M.A in Fine Art from the University of Ulster. When at college, the artist preferred to engage in socially engaged figurative painting, and during her summers she spent time in New York City drawing street portraits, her style developing into what the country knows and loves today. Her work is generally seen to be autobiographical and deals with Irish identity, history and politics, often exploring these themes through irony, wit and humour. Duffy’s style is influenced by those of surrealism and magical realism (a style that depicts fantastical events in an otherwise realistic tone). Duffy now lives in Fermanagh with her family and works from her studio located in Ballyconnell, County Cavan, just south of the border. She has intentionally crept to the creative margins of Ulster where she can keep a “gimlet eye on the South” and intentionally away from Belfast's creative scene - yet another place she believed to never have belonged. The artist describes herself as “a republican in the truest sense of the word”, a pacifist and feminist.
In 2005, Rita Duffy was named “Ulster's foremost artist”. Her work features in several major Irish institution's collections such as the Hugh Lane Gallery - which possesses her Sofa (1996), blood red and covered in sharp pins - and the Irish Museum of Modern Art which owns one of her Watchtower paintings which depicts observation sangars of the British Army. Three drawings produced in the 1980s (one of a soldier, one of a ‘kneecapping’ she witnessed on the Falls Road and one of a woman banging bin lids together) were purchased in the mid-2010s by the Imperial War Museum in London. Her art is also held in many public collections such as the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the Ulster Museum in Belfast, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, The Drawing Museum in New York and the Office of Public Works in Dublin. In 2017, Duffy was recognised for her contribution to visual arts in Ireland and elected to Aosdana, Ireland's elected ‘people of the arts’. She held an artist residency at Trinity College Dublin’s Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Institute where she worked on her project The Raft Project (2019), a reaction to Brexit and the border-poll discussion, inspired by Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa (1818-19), as well as the project Anatomy of Hope (2021) which looked at the Covid-19 pandemic.
Duffy first came to prominent public attention in 2005 when she proposed to tow an iceberg from Greenland to Belfast in order to draw attention to the city's links to the Titanic; this was also in an attempt to highlight the frosty impasse of Northern Irish Politics. The mooring of the iceberg and allowing it to thaw was conceived in order to encourage the melting of the frozen political differences, and Duffy stated that a large mountain of ice was the easiest way to represent where the people and government stood; according to her, it was necessary to stop the denial so prevalent in Northern Irish culture and a need to accept what sank them in the first place. Even the proposal of this project was controversial, perhaps resurfacing ghosts that many in the community would rather not have remembered. Of course, this project was somewhat personal to Duffy due to her father's involvement with the Belfast shipyard, but the artist also aimed for the journey of the iceberg to be symbolic, intentionally planning for the route to emulate that of the old Viking road, paying homage to the migration of many who settled in Northern Ireland. The iceberg was also planned to travel down the Western Isles of Scotland, an area that shared a Gaelic language and where Protestant planters migrated from in the 17th century. The community held mixed feelings on the piece; writer Polly Devlin expressed that the artwork would be a wonderful closure, whereas Una Reilly, co-founder of the Belfast Titanic Society understood why Duffy wanted to develop the symbolism of the iceberg, but claimed it was too soon after the tragedy for such an artwork. Although the project was never fully realized, the aims of “Thaw” remained relevant in the art of Duffy throughout her career.
Another of her most iconic artistic ventures, Souvenir Shop (2016) was commissioned by the Irish Government for the centenary of the 1916 Rising, one of nine Arts Council-funded projects for the event. In an old and neglected Georgian manor on North Great Georges Street, Dublin City Center, Duffy set up her installation which featured a range of 50 everyday products displayed in the exhibition. The project was an attempt to subvert and examine Irish identity; it also aimed to examine Irish history from a humorous and poignant, absurd and feminist perspective. Among the items on display were sets of Mexican grave candles that depicted revolutionary hero Patrick Pearse as the Virgin of Guadeloupe, Irish mythological figure Cuchulainn, and hunger striker Bobby Sands. There were also “smuggled cigarettes”, “green diesel” and hand-decorated Easter eggs (the Celtic symbol of rebirth, goodness and fertility) on display. Visitors were even able to purchase vintage-style paper cut-outs "make your own Markievicz" dolls. The exhibition attempted to serve as an antidote to taking the centenary commemorations too seriously and, with this artwork, Duffy aimed to amuse, stimulate, perhaps irritate, but above all intrigue.
Duffy is still an active artist today: her most recent exhibition, Persistent Illusion featured three large-scale works that present themes of planetary crisis and political chaos and finished its showing at Cork’s Crawford Gallery at the end of October. Works entitled Epiphany (2021), Belfast to Byzantium (2022) and Ornithopter (2023), all evoke the children’s tales ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, with the gallery describing Duffy’s ability to “create a Lilliputian neurotic nightmare that goes to the heart of human rights, capitalism, and democracy”. The unsettling, dystopian and violent nature of these pieces is different to the artist's established visual canon, yet still allows them to find their place in her iconic style.
There appears to be no sign of this iconic and well-loved artist slowing down, so keep an eye out for the work of Rita Duffy across the UK and Ireland in the coming year; although nothing has yet been officially announced, we have no doubt that there is much more to come...
Born in 1959 to a Catholic family in Belfast, artist Rita Duffy experienced first-hand the horrors of Northern Ireland’s Troubles. Her father hailed from the famed Falls Road, an area of Belfast synonymous with the Catholic community; he was one of the few Catholics permitted to work in the city's shipyard. Her mother came from rural Offaly, in the Republic of Ireland. The family lived in the Protestant neighbourhood, Stranmillis, and Duffy was sent to an Irish Catholic secondary school on Falls Road. These two very prominent locations of her childhood were both places where Duffy did not feel like she fitted in.
As an adult, Duffy received a B.A. from the Art and Design Centre, followed by an M.A in Fine Art from the University of Ulster. When at college, the artist preferred to engage in socially engaged figurative painting, and during her summers she spent time in New York City drawing street portraits, her style developing into what the country knows and loves today. Her work is generally seen to be autobiographical and deals with Irish identity, history and politics, often exploring these themes through irony, wit and humour. Duffy’s style is influenced by those of surrealism and magical realism (a style that depicts fantastical events in an otherwise realistic tone). Duffy now lives in Fermanagh with her family and works from her studio located in Ballyconnell, County Cavan, just south of the border. She has intentionally crept to the creative margins of Ulster where she can keep a “gimlet eye on the South” and intentionally away from Belfast's creative scene - yet another place she believed to never have belonged. The artist describes herself as “a republican in the truest sense of the word”, a pacifist and feminist.
In 2005, Rita Duffy was named “Ulster's foremost artist”. Her work features in several major Irish institution's collections such as the Hugh Lane Gallery - which possesses her Sofa (1996), blood red and covered in sharp pins - and the Irish Museum of Modern Art which owns one of her Watchtower paintings which depicts observation sangars of the British Army. Three drawings produced in the 1980s (one of a soldier, one of a ‘kneecapping’ she witnessed on the Falls Road and one of a woman banging bin lids together) were purchased in the mid-2010s by the Imperial War Museum in London. Her art is also held in many public collections such as the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the Ulster Museum in Belfast, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, The Drawing Museum in New York and the Office of Public Works in Dublin. In 2017, Duffy was recognised for her contribution to visual arts in Ireland and elected to Aosdana, Ireland's elected ‘people of the arts’. She held an artist residency at Trinity College Dublin’s Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Institute where she worked on her project The Raft Project (2019), a reaction to Brexit and the border-poll discussion, inspired by Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa (1818-19), as well as the project Anatomy of Hope (2021) which looked at the Covid-19 pandemic.
Duffy first came to prominent public attention in 2005 when she proposed to tow an iceberg from Greenland to Belfast in order to draw attention to the city's links to the Titanic; this was also in an attempt to highlight the frosty impasse of Northern Irish Politics. The mooring of the iceberg and allowing it to thaw was conceived in order to encourage the melting of the frozen political differences, and Duffy stated that a large mountain of ice was the easiest way to represent where the people and government stood; according to her, it was necessary to stop the denial so prevalent in Northern Irish culture and a need to accept what sank them in the first place. Even the proposal of this project was controversial, perhaps resurfacing ghosts that many in the community would rather not have remembered. Of course, this project was somewhat personal to Duffy due to her father's involvement with the Belfast shipyard, but the artist also aimed for the journey of the iceberg to be symbolic, intentionally planning for the route to emulate that of the old Viking road, paying homage to the migration of many who settled in Northern Ireland. The iceberg was also planned to travel down the Western Isles of Scotland, an area that shared a Gaelic language and where Protestant planters migrated from in the 17th century. The community held mixed feelings on the piece; writer Polly Devlin expressed that the artwork would be a wonderful closure, whereas Una Reilly, co-founder of the Belfast Titanic Society understood why Duffy wanted to develop the symbolism of the iceberg, but claimed it was too soon after the tragedy for such an artwork. Although the project was never fully realized, the aims of “Thaw” remained relevant in the art of Duffy throughout her career.
Another of her most iconic artistic ventures, Souvenir Shop (2016) was commissioned by the Irish Government for the centenary of the 1916 Rising, one of nine Arts Council-funded projects for the event. In an old and neglected Georgian manor on North Great Georges Street, Dublin City Center, Duffy set up her installation which featured a range of 50 everyday products displayed in the exhibition. The project was an attempt to subvert and examine Irish identity; it also aimed to examine Irish history from a humorous and poignant, absurd and feminist perspective. Among the items on display were sets of Mexican grave candles that depicted revolutionary hero Patrick Pearse as the Virgin of Guadeloupe, Irish mythological figure Cuchulainn, and hunger striker Bobby Sands. There were also “smuggled cigarettes”, “green diesel” and hand-decorated Easter eggs (the Celtic symbol of rebirth, goodness and fertility) on display. Visitors were even able to purchase vintage-style paper cut-outs "make your own Markievicz" dolls. The exhibition attempted to serve as an antidote to taking the centenary commemorations too seriously and, with this artwork, Duffy aimed to amuse, stimulate, perhaps irritate, but above all intrigue.
Duffy is still an active artist today: her most recent exhibition, Persistent Illusion featured three large-scale works that present themes of planetary crisis and political chaos and finished its showing at Cork’s Crawford Gallery at the end of October. Works entitled Epiphany (2021), Belfast to Byzantium (2022) and Ornithopter (2023), all evoke the children’s tales ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, with the gallery describing Duffy’s ability to “create a Lilliputian neurotic nightmare that goes to the heart of human rights, capitalism, and democracy”. The unsettling, dystopian and violent nature of these pieces is different to the artist's established visual canon, yet still allows them to find their place in her iconic style.
There appears to be no sign of this iconic and well-loved artist slowing down, so keep an eye out for the work of Rita Duffy across the UK and Ireland in the coming year; although nothing has yet been officially announced, we have no doubt that there is much more to come...
Born in 1959 to a Catholic family in Belfast, artist Rita Duffy experienced first-hand the horrors of Northern Ireland’s Troubles. Her father hailed from the famed Falls Road, an area of Belfast synonymous with the Catholic community; he was one of the few Catholics permitted to work in the city's shipyard. Her mother came from rural Offaly, in the Republic of Ireland. The family lived in the Protestant neighbourhood, Stranmillis, and Duffy was sent to an Irish Catholic secondary school on Falls Road. These two very prominent locations of her childhood were both places where Duffy did not feel like she fitted in.
As an adult, Duffy received a B.A. from the Art and Design Centre, followed by an M.A in Fine Art from the University of Ulster. When at college, the artist preferred to engage in socially engaged figurative painting, and during her summers she spent time in New York City drawing street portraits, her style developing into what the country knows and loves today. Her work is generally seen to be autobiographical and deals with Irish identity, history and politics, often exploring these themes through irony, wit and humour. Duffy’s style is influenced by those of surrealism and magical realism (a style that depicts fantastical events in an otherwise realistic tone). Duffy now lives in Fermanagh with her family and works from her studio located in Ballyconnell, County Cavan, just south of the border. She has intentionally crept to the creative margins of Ulster where she can keep a “gimlet eye on the South” and intentionally away from Belfast's creative scene - yet another place she believed to never have belonged. The artist describes herself as “a republican in the truest sense of the word”, a pacifist and feminist.
In 2005, Rita Duffy was named “Ulster's foremost artist”. Her work features in several major Irish institution's collections such as the Hugh Lane Gallery - which possesses her Sofa (1996), blood red and covered in sharp pins - and the Irish Museum of Modern Art which owns one of her Watchtower paintings which depicts observation sangars of the British Army. Three drawings produced in the 1980s (one of a soldier, one of a ‘kneecapping’ she witnessed on the Falls Road and one of a woman banging bin lids together) were purchased in the mid-2010s by the Imperial War Museum in London. Her art is also held in many public collections such as the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the Ulster Museum in Belfast, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, The Drawing Museum in New York and the Office of Public Works in Dublin. In 2017, Duffy was recognised for her contribution to visual arts in Ireland and elected to Aosdana, Ireland's elected ‘people of the arts’. She held an artist residency at Trinity College Dublin’s Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Institute where she worked on her project The Raft Project (2019), a reaction to Brexit and the border-poll discussion, inspired by Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa (1818-19), as well as the project Anatomy of Hope (2021) which looked at the Covid-19 pandemic.
Duffy first came to prominent public attention in 2005 when she proposed to tow an iceberg from Greenland to Belfast in order to draw attention to the city's links to the Titanic; this was also in an attempt to highlight the frosty impasse of Northern Irish Politics. The mooring of the iceberg and allowing it to thaw was conceived in order to encourage the melting of the frozen political differences, and Duffy stated that a large mountain of ice was the easiest way to represent where the people and government stood; according to her, it was necessary to stop the denial so prevalent in Northern Irish culture and a need to accept what sank them in the first place. Even the proposal of this project was controversial, perhaps resurfacing ghosts that many in the community would rather not have remembered. Of course, this project was somewhat personal to Duffy due to her father's involvement with the Belfast shipyard, but the artist also aimed for the journey of the iceberg to be symbolic, intentionally planning for the route to emulate that of the old Viking road, paying homage to the migration of many who settled in Northern Ireland. The iceberg was also planned to travel down the Western Isles of Scotland, an area that shared a Gaelic language and where Protestant planters migrated from in the 17th century. The community held mixed feelings on the piece; writer Polly Devlin expressed that the artwork would be a wonderful closure, whereas Una Reilly, co-founder of the Belfast Titanic Society understood why Duffy wanted to develop the symbolism of the iceberg, but claimed it was too soon after the tragedy for such an artwork. Although the project was never fully realized, the aims of “Thaw” remained relevant in the art of Duffy throughout her career.
Another of her most iconic artistic ventures, Souvenir Shop (2016) was commissioned by the Irish Government for the centenary of the 1916 Rising, one of nine Arts Council-funded projects for the event. In an old and neglected Georgian manor on North Great Georges Street, Dublin City Center, Duffy set up her installation which featured a range of 50 everyday products displayed in the exhibition. The project was an attempt to subvert and examine Irish identity; it also aimed to examine Irish history from a humorous and poignant, absurd and feminist perspective. Among the items on display were sets of Mexican grave candles that depicted revolutionary hero Patrick Pearse as the Virgin of Guadeloupe, Irish mythological figure Cuchulainn, and hunger striker Bobby Sands. There were also “smuggled cigarettes”, “green diesel” and hand-decorated Easter eggs (the Celtic symbol of rebirth, goodness and fertility) on display. Visitors were even able to purchase vintage-style paper cut-outs "make your own Markievicz" dolls. The exhibition attempted to serve as an antidote to taking the centenary commemorations too seriously and, with this artwork, Duffy aimed to amuse, stimulate, perhaps irritate, but above all intrigue.
Duffy is still an active artist today: her most recent exhibition, Persistent Illusion featured three large-scale works that present themes of planetary crisis and political chaos and finished its showing at Cork’s Crawford Gallery at the end of October. Works entitled Epiphany (2021), Belfast to Byzantium (2022) and Ornithopter (2023), all evoke the children’s tales ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, with the gallery describing Duffy’s ability to “create a Lilliputian neurotic nightmare that goes to the heart of human rights, capitalism, and democracy”. The unsettling, dystopian and violent nature of these pieces is different to the artist's established visual canon, yet still allows them to find their place in her iconic style.
There appears to be no sign of this iconic and well-loved artist slowing down, so keep an eye out for the work of Rita Duffy across the UK and Ireland in the coming year; although nothing has yet been officially announced, we have no doubt that there is much more to come...
Born in 1959 to a Catholic family in Belfast, artist Rita Duffy experienced first-hand the horrors of Northern Ireland’s Troubles. Her father hailed from the famed Falls Road, an area of Belfast synonymous with the Catholic community; he was one of the few Catholics permitted to work in the city's shipyard. Her mother came from rural Offaly, in the Republic of Ireland. The family lived in the Protestant neighbourhood, Stranmillis, and Duffy was sent to an Irish Catholic secondary school on Falls Road. These two very prominent locations of her childhood were both places where Duffy did not feel like she fitted in.
As an adult, Duffy received a B.A. from the Art and Design Centre, followed by an M.A in Fine Art from the University of Ulster. When at college, the artist preferred to engage in socially engaged figurative painting, and during her summers she spent time in New York City drawing street portraits, her style developing into what the country knows and loves today. Her work is generally seen to be autobiographical and deals with Irish identity, history and politics, often exploring these themes through irony, wit and humour. Duffy’s style is influenced by those of surrealism and magical realism (a style that depicts fantastical events in an otherwise realistic tone). Duffy now lives in Fermanagh with her family and works from her studio located in Ballyconnell, County Cavan, just south of the border. She has intentionally crept to the creative margins of Ulster where she can keep a “gimlet eye on the South” and intentionally away from Belfast's creative scene - yet another place she believed to never have belonged. The artist describes herself as “a republican in the truest sense of the word”, a pacifist and feminist.
In 2005, Rita Duffy was named “Ulster's foremost artist”. Her work features in several major Irish institution's collections such as the Hugh Lane Gallery - which possesses her Sofa (1996), blood red and covered in sharp pins - and the Irish Museum of Modern Art which owns one of her Watchtower paintings which depicts observation sangars of the British Army. Three drawings produced in the 1980s (one of a soldier, one of a ‘kneecapping’ she witnessed on the Falls Road and one of a woman banging bin lids together) were purchased in the mid-2010s by the Imperial War Museum in London. Her art is also held in many public collections such as the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the Ulster Museum in Belfast, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, The Drawing Museum in New York and the Office of Public Works in Dublin. In 2017, Duffy was recognised for her contribution to visual arts in Ireland and elected to Aosdana, Ireland's elected ‘people of the arts’. She held an artist residency at Trinity College Dublin’s Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Institute where she worked on her project The Raft Project (2019), a reaction to Brexit and the border-poll discussion, inspired by Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa (1818-19), as well as the project Anatomy of Hope (2021) which looked at the Covid-19 pandemic.
Duffy first came to prominent public attention in 2005 when she proposed to tow an iceberg from Greenland to Belfast in order to draw attention to the city's links to the Titanic; this was also in an attempt to highlight the frosty impasse of Northern Irish Politics. The mooring of the iceberg and allowing it to thaw was conceived in order to encourage the melting of the frozen political differences, and Duffy stated that a large mountain of ice was the easiest way to represent where the people and government stood; according to her, it was necessary to stop the denial so prevalent in Northern Irish culture and a need to accept what sank them in the first place. Even the proposal of this project was controversial, perhaps resurfacing ghosts that many in the community would rather not have remembered. Of course, this project was somewhat personal to Duffy due to her father's involvement with the Belfast shipyard, but the artist also aimed for the journey of the iceberg to be symbolic, intentionally planning for the route to emulate that of the old Viking road, paying homage to the migration of many who settled in Northern Ireland. The iceberg was also planned to travel down the Western Isles of Scotland, an area that shared a Gaelic language and where Protestant planters migrated from in the 17th century. The community held mixed feelings on the piece; writer Polly Devlin expressed that the artwork would be a wonderful closure, whereas Una Reilly, co-founder of the Belfast Titanic Society understood why Duffy wanted to develop the symbolism of the iceberg, but claimed it was too soon after the tragedy for such an artwork. Although the project was never fully realized, the aims of “Thaw” remained relevant in the art of Duffy throughout her career.
Another of her most iconic artistic ventures, Souvenir Shop (2016) was commissioned by the Irish Government for the centenary of the 1916 Rising, one of nine Arts Council-funded projects for the event. In an old and neglected Georgian manor on North Great Georges Street, Dublin City Center, Duffy set up her installation which featured a range of 50 everyday products displayed in the exhibition. The project was an attempt to subvert and examine Irish identity; it also aimed to examine Irish history from a humorous and poignant, absurd and feminist perspective. Among the items on display were sets of Mexican grave candles that depicted revolutionary hero Patrick Pearse as the Virgin of Guadeloupe, Irish mythological figure Cuchulainn, and hunger striker Bobby Sands. There were also “smuggled cigarettes”, “green diesel” and hand-decorated Easter eggs (the Celtic symbol of rebirth, goodness and fertility) on display. Visitors were even able to purchase vintage-style paper cut-outs "make your own Markievicz" dolls. The exhibition attempted to serve as an antidote to taking the centenary commemorations too seriously and, with this artwork, Duffy aimed to amuse, stimulate, perhaps irritate, but above all intrigue.
Duffy is still an active artist today: her most recent exhibition, Persistent Illusion featured three large-scale works that present themes of planetary crisis and political chaos and finished its showing at Cork’s Crawford Gallery at the end of October. Works entitled Epiphany (2021), Belfast to Byzantium (2022) and Ornithopter (2023), all evoke the children’s tales ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, with the gallery describing Duffy’s ability to “create a Lilliputian neurotic nightmare that goes to the heart of human rights, capitalism, and democracy”. The unsettling, dystopian and violent nature of these pieces is different to the artist's established visual canon, yet still allows them to find their place in her iconic style.
There appears to be no sign of this iconic and well-loved artist slowing down, so keep an eye out for the work of Rita Duffy across the UK and Ireland in the coming year; although nothing has yet been officially announced, we have no doubt that there is much more to come...
Born in 1959 to a Catholic family in Belfast, artist Rita Duffy experienced first-hand the horrors of Northern Ireland’s Troubles. Her father hailed from the famed Falls Road, an area of Belfast synonymous with the Catholic community; he was one of the few Catholics permitted to work in the city's shipyard. Her mother came from rural Offaly, in the Republic of Ireland. The family lived in the Protestant neighbourhood, Stranmillis, and Duffy was sent to an Irish Catholic secondary school on Falls Road. These two very prominent locations of her childhood were both places where Duffy did not feel like she fitted in.
As an adult, Duffy received a B.A. from the Art and Design Centre, followed by an M.A in Fine Art from the University of Ulster. When at college, the artist preferred to engage in socially engaged figurative painting, and during her summers she spent time in New York City drawing street portraits, her style developing into what the country knows and loves today. Her work is generally seen to be autobiographical and deals with Irish identity, history and politics, often exploring these themes through irony, wit and humour. Duffy’s style is influenced by those of surrealism and magical realism (a style that depicts fantastical events in an otherwise realistic tone). Duffy now lives in Fermanagh with her family and works from her studio located in Ballyconnell, County Cavan, just south of the border. She has intentionally crept to the creative margins of Ulster where she can keep a “gimlet eye on the South” and intentionally away from Belfast's creative scene - yet another place she believed to never have belonged. The artist describes herself as “a republican in the truest sense of the word”, a pacifist and feminist.
In 2005, Rita Duffy was named “Ulster's foremost artist”. Her work features in several major Irish institution's collections such as the Hugh Lane Gallery - which possesses her Sofa (1996), blood red and covered in sharp pins - and the Irish Museum of Modern Art which owns one of her Watchtower paintings which depicts observation sangars of the British Army. Three drawings produced in the 1980s (one of a soldier, one of a ‘kneecapping’ she witnessed on the Falls Road and one of a woman banging bin lids together) were purchased in the mid-2010s by the Imperial War Museum in London. Her art is also held in many public collections such as the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the Ulster Museum in Belfast, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, The Drawing Museum in New York and the Office of Public Works in Dublin. In 2017, Duffy was recognised for her contribution to visual arts in Ireland and elected to Aosdana, Ireland's elected ‘people of the arts’. She held an artist residency at Trinity College Dublin’s Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Institute where she worked on her project The Raft Project (2019), a reaction to Brexit and the border-poll discussion, inspired by Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa (1818-19), as well as the project Anatomy of Hope (2021) which looked at the Covid-19 pandemic.
Duffy first came to prominent public attention in 2005 when she proposed to tow an iceberg from Greenland to Belfast in order to draw attention to the city's links to the Titanic; this was also in an attempt to highlight the frosty impasse of Northern Irish Politics. The mooring of the iceberg and allowing it to thaw was conceived in order to encourage the melting of the frozen political differences, and Duffy stated that a large mountain of ice was the easiest way to represent where the people and government stood; according to her, it was necessary to stop the denial so prevalent in Northern Irish culture and a need to accept what sank them in the first place. Even the proposal of this project was controversial, perhaps resurfacing ghosts that many in the community would rather not have remembered. Of course, this project was somewhat personal to Duffy due to her father's involvement with the Belfast shipyard, but the artist also aimed for the journey of the iceberg to be symbolic, intentionally planning for the route to emulate that of the old Viking road, paying homage to the migration of many who settled in Northern Ireland. The iceberg was also planned to travel down the Western Isles of Scotland, an area that shared a Gaelic language and where Protestant planters migrated from in the 17th century. The community held mixed feelings on the piece; writer Polly Devlin expressed that the artwork would be a wonderful closure, whereas Una Reilly, co-founder of the Belfast Titanic Society understood why Duffy wanted to develop the symbolism of the iceberg, but claimed it was too soon after the tragedy for such an artwork. Although the project was never fully realized, the aims of “Thaw” remained relevant in the art of Duffy throughout her career.
Another of her most iconic artistic ventures, Souvenir Shop (2016) was commissioned by the Irish Government for the centenary of the 1916 Rising, one of nine Arts Council-funded projects for the event. In an old and neglected Georgian manor on North Great Georges Street, Dublin City Center, Duffy set up her installation which featured a range of 50 everyday products displayed in the exhibition. The project was an attempt to subvert and examine Irish identity; it also aimed to examine Irish history from a humorous and poignant, absurd and feminist perspective. Among the items on display were sets of Mexican grave candles that depicted revolutionary hero Patrick Pearse as the Virgin of Guadeloupe, Irish mythological figure Cuchulainn, and hunger striker Bobby Sands. There were also “smuggled cigarettes”, “green diesel” and hand-decorated Easter eggs (the Celtic symbol of rebirth, goodness and fertility) on display. Visitors were even able to purchase vintage-style paper cut-outs "make your own Markievicz" dolls. The exhibition attempted to serve as an antidote to taking the centenary commemorations too seriously and, with this artwork, Duffy aimed to amuse, stimulate, perhaps irritate, but above all intrigue.
Duffy is still an active artist today: her most recent exhibition, Persistent Illusion featured three large-scale works that present themes of planetary crisis and political chaos and finished its showing at Cork’s Crawford Gallery at the end of October. Works entitled Epiphany (2021), Belfast to Byzantium (2022) and Ornithopter (2023), all evoke the children’s tales ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, with the gallery describing Duffy’s ability to “create a Lilliputian neurotic nightmare that goes to the heart of human rights, capitalism, and democracy”. The unsettling, dystopian and violent nature of these pieces is different to the artist's established visual canon, yet still allows them to find their place in her iconic style.
There appears to be no sign of this iconic and well-loved artist slowing down, so keep an eye out for the work of Rita Duffy across the UK and Ireland in the coming year; although nothing has yet been officially announced, we have no doubt that there is much more to come...
Born in 1959 to a Catholic family in Belfast, artist Rita Duffy experienced first-hand the horrors of Northern Ireland’s Troubles. Her father hailed from the famed Falls Road, an area of Belfast synonymous with the Catholic community; he was one of the few Catholics permitted to work in the city's shipyard. Her mother came from rural Offaly, in the Republic of Ireland. The family lived in the Protestant neighbourhood, Stranmillis, and Duffy was sent to an Irish Catholic secondary school on Falls Road. These two very prominent locations of her childhood were both places where Duffy did not feel like she fitted in.
As an adult, Duffy received a B.A. from the Art and Design Centre, followed by an M.A in Fine Art from the University of Ulster. When at college, the artist preferred to engage in socially engaged figurative painting, and during her summers she spent time in New York City drawing street portraits, her style developing into what the country knows and loves today. Her work is generally seen to be autobiographical and deals with Irish identity, history and politics, often exploring these themes through irony, wit and humour. Duffy’s style is influenced by those of surrealism and magical realism (a style that depicts fantastical events in an otherwise realistic tone). Duffy now lives in Fermanagh with her family and works from her studio located in Ballyconnell, County Cavan, just south of the border. She has intentionally crept to the creative margins of Ulster where she can keep a “gimlet eye on the South” and intentionally away from Belfast's creative scene - yet another place she believed to never have belonged. The artist describes herself as “a republican in the truest sense of the word”, a pacifist and feminist.
In 2005, Rita Duffy was named “Ulster's foremost artist”. Her work features in several major Irish institution's collections such as the Hugh Lane Gallery - which possesses her Sofa (1996), blood red and covered in sharp pins - and the Irish Museum of Modern Art which owns one of her Watchtower paintings which depicts observation sangars of the British Army. Three drawings produced in the 1980s (one of a soldier, one of a ‘kneecapping’ she witnessed on the Falls Road and one of a woman banging bin lids together) were purchased in the mid-2010s by the Imperial War Museum in London. Her art is also held in many public collections such as the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the Ulster Museum in Belfast, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, The Drawing Museum in New York and the Office of Public Works in Dublin. In 2017, Duffy was recognised for her contribution to visual arts in Ireland and elected to Aosdana, Ireland's elected ‘people of the arts’. She held an artist residency at Trinity College Dublin’s Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Institute where she worked on her project The Raft Project (2019), a reaction to Brexit and the border-poll discussion, inspired by Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa (1818-19), as well as the project Anatomy of Hope (2021) which looked at the Covid-19 pandemic.
Duffy first came to prominent public attention in 2005 when she proposed to tow an iceberg from Greenland to Belfast in order to draw attention to the city's links to the Titanic; this was also in an attempt to highlight the frosty impasse of Northern Irish Politics. The mooring of the iceberg and allowing it to thaw was conceived in order to encourage the melting of the frozen political differences, and Duffy stated that a large mountain of ice was the easiest way to represent where the people and government stood; according to her, it was necessary to stop the denial so prevalent in Northern Irish culture and a need to accept what sank them in the first place. Even the proposal of this project was controversial, perhaps resurfacing ghosts that many in the community would rather not have remembered. Of course, this project was somewhat personal to Duffy due to her father's involvement with the Belfast shipyard, but the artist also aimed for the journey of the iceberg to be symbolic, intentionally planning for the route to emulate that of the old Viking road, paying homage to the migration of many who settled in Northern Ireland. The iceberg was also planned to travel down the Western Isles of Scotland, an area that shared a Gaelic language and where Protestant planters migrated from in the 17th century. The community held mixed feelings on the piece; writer Polly Devlin expressed that the artwork would be a wonderful closure, whereas Una Reilly, co-founder of the Belfast Titanic Society understood why Duffy wanted to develop the symbolism of the iceberg, but claimed it was too soon after the tragedy for such an artwork. Although the project was never fully realized, the aims of “Thaw” remained relevant in the art of Duffy throughout her career.
Another of her most iconic artistic ventures, Souvenir Shop (2016) was commissioned by the Irish Government for the centenary of the 1916 Rising, one of nine Arts Council-funded projects for the event. In an old and neglected Georgian manor on North Great Georges Street, Dublin City Center, Duffy set up her installation which featured a range of 50 everyday products displayed in the exhibition. The project was an attempt to subvert and examine Irish identity; it also aimed to examine Irish history from a humorous and poignant, absurd and feminist perspective. Among the items on display were sets of Mexican grave candles that depicted revolutionary hero Patrick Pearse as the Virgin of Guadeloupe, Irish mythological figure Cuchulainn, and hunger striker Bobby Sands. There were also “smuggled cigarettes”, “green diesel” and hand-decorated Easter eggs (the Celtic symbol of rebirth, goodness and fertility) on display. Visitors were even able to purchase vintage-style paper cut-outs "make your own Markievicz" dolls. The exhibition attempted to serve as an antidote to taking the centenary commemorations too seriously and, with this artwork, Duffy aimed to amuse, stimulate, perhaps irritate, but above all intrigue.
Duffy is still an active artist today: her most recent exhibition, Persistent Illusion featured three large-scale works that present themes of planetary crisis and political chaos and finished its showing at Cork’s Crawford Gallery at the end of October. Works entitled Epiphany (2021), Belfast to Byzantium (2022) and Ornithopter (2023), all evoke the children’s tales ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, with the gallery describing Duffy’s ability to “create a Lilliputian neurotic nightmare that goes to the heart of human rights, capitalism, and democracy”. The unsettling, dystopian and violent nature of these pieces is different to the artist's established visual canon, yet still allows them to find their place in her iconic style.
There appears to be no sign of this iconic and well-loved artist slowing down, so keep an eye out for the work of Rita Duffy across the UK and Ireland in the coming year; although nothing has yet been officially announced, we have no doubt that there is much more to come...
