JOSEPH HEFFERNAN

Joseph Heffernan is an artist from Cork based in Backwater Artists Studios, Cork. He graduated from Crawford MTU in 2009 and completed a Masters (Fine Art- Painting) in NCAD, Dublin in 2016. He works in a number of different mediums including painting, assemblage, drawing, installation and text and has exhibited widely in Ireland and abroad in group shows and solo exhibitions including shows in RHA, Dublin (2020), Studio 12 Gallery, Backwater Studios, Cork (2023) and Triskel Arts Centre, Cork (2024). His practice deals with rituals, objects and memory and is concerned with the way in which identity is constructed. It is rooted in the study of how domestic and social spaces function and has been influenced in the past by the Philosopher Michel Foucault's ideas around ‘Heterotopias’ and Gaston Bachelard’s seminal text The Poetics of Space. He has been the recipient of several awards including the CIAS Award for a Work of Distinction at the RHA Annual Open in 2020, the Arts Council Agility Award (2021) and the Cork City Council Individual Artists Bursary(2023).