ESP visited artist Bridget O’Gorman in her studio at Birmingham City University’s School of Art.

Bridget is the recipient of the 2016 Wheatley Bequest Fine Art Fellowship, which provides an artist with a studio and support over a ten-month period. Bridget will be making new work and research during the Fellowship that will be presented in a concluding exhibition.

Working across a range of media and with a study of material culture as its base, Bridget’s work acts as a means of linking disparate fictional, poetic, philosophical or historical accounts with contemporary concerns.

During the visit Bridget spoke about her practice and previous works, as well as introducing us to new work and research that she’ll be developing during the Fellowship. ESP members had the opportunity to ask questions about works and ideas, see starting points and works in progress, and understand more about the context of working within university.

Bridget O'Gorman (b. 1981, Ireland) completed an MFA between the Department of Applied Art and The School of Sculpture at Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland in 2008. Recent solo and selected group exhibitions include In The Flesh at The Lab Gallery, Dublin, 2016, Telling the Bees at the Galway Arts Centre IE 2015, From a Studio Exchange at Acme Project Space, London UK, If I show you the Roses, Rubicon Projects, Dublin IE, & Wade In at Eastern Edge Gallery, CA. She is the recipient of various awards including the Arts Council of Ireland Visual Arts Bursary Award 2016/14, Acme Fire Station Work/Live Programme Exchange London 2014, the Future Makers Award 2011 and the Wexford Emerging Visual Artist Award 2010. For the past two years she has been based at Fire Station Artists’ Studios in Dublin and has recently commenced new research through the Wheatley Bequest Fine Art Fellowship at Birmingham School of Art in the UK.