Sarah Iremonger

​

Sarah Iremonger has been working as a visual artist since the early 1990's. Early painted works were embedded in romantic and modernist traditions, with epic implications. Later works, included site-specific installations, used a multimedia approach of found, created and adapted images, including photographs, murals, painting, drawing, badges, cards, digital media, video and neon, which attempted to attain a kind of entanglement with the world, exploring ideas of representation and how as a hangover of the romantic tradition, a scenario of separation from the world around us and each other, is perpetuated. A recent return to painting focuses on the appropriation and adaptation of found images, which places subject matter and personal artistic expression in the background, so that visual signifiers become hidden in a forest of post-representational camouflage like thought experiments exploring the illusion of perception.

Iremonger was born in Dublin in 1965, living and working in Co. Cork since 1985. She co-founded the Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh, Co. Cork in 1985, volunteering there until 1999 and working as an independent curator and artists liaison (part-time) between 1999-2015. She studied pre-diploma and fine art at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin 1983-85, printmaking and photography at the Crawford College of Art and Design, Cork 1985-87 and completed an MA in European Fine Art from Winchester School of Art, Southampton University, UK in 1998.

Recent projects include: Build Your Own Horizon with Uillinn, West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen, Bealtaine Artist in Residence, and Cork County Council 2022; Re:Group, Constellations of Fragmentation collaborative project with Uillinn and Skibbereen Arts Festival 2022; Space Time: Horizons, Atlantis and A Rain Bridge presentation at the Sorbonne Nouvelle Université, Paris, France 2022; Change 'Hunters Hide' exhibition at Emmanuel Walderdorff Galerie, Hofgut Molsberg, Westerwald, Germany 2021; 30 Years of Making at the Signal Arts Centre, Bray, Co. Wicklow 2021; 24/7 online slide show for the National Sculpture Factory, Cork 2020.

Vessels was exhibited online as part of The Time of Our Lives 2020 and New & Recent Work 2021 with Oliver Sears Gallery Dublin and An Incandescent Connection, studio exhibition in Kinsale, Co. Cork 2021, Outdraw & Evanescent exhibitions, Uillinn, West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen, Co. Cork 2020 & 2021.

Horizons 2014-22 started as a collaborative project with poet Derek Mahon, funded through Cork County Council Arts Grants Scheme Award 2015 and was exhibited at Oliver Sears Gallery, Dublin in 2018 & 2019; Top Half of the Hero was exhibited as part of Heroes and Villains 2018-19 at the Crawford Art Gallery, Cork; Iremonger illustrated Atlantis 2019 a poetry pamphlet by Derek Mahon and The Rain Bridge 2017 a children's book both published by The Gallery Press; IL Ponte Della Pioggia Valigie Rosse, (Italian translation) Italy 2018.
 
Iremonger was Artist in Resident at the Sydney Olympic Park and Broken Hill Art Exchange, Australia 2011 and was the Von Hess Resident at the Borowsky Centre, UARTS, University of The Arts, Philadelphia, USA 2010 where she was also visiting artist and exhibited I thought I dreamed of you at Gallery 817, this work was also exhibited at the West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen, Co. Cork 2009-10 and travelled to the Yarra Sculpture Gallery, Melbourne, Australia 2010.
 

Awards include: Cork County Council Arts Grant Scheme Awards in 2008, 2015 and 2022; Culture Ireland Awards for exhibitions in 2003, 2010 and 2011; Arts Council Bursary Award 2005; Arts Council New Project Award 2002; and Artist in Residence Fellowship at the Kunstlerhaus Schloss Wiepersdorf, Germany 2003.

 
Commissions include: the Upside-down Mountains which consists of a neon installation and a painted mural commissioned by the OPW Office of Public Works for the Northside Civic Centre, Coolock, Dublin 2003 with adaptations in 2012; Where’s Me Cork? and Freedom Box video works commissioned for the Airgador - Cork Silver and Gold exhibition Crawford Art Gallery, Cork for the European Capital of Culture Cork 2005.