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Ursula Burke

@burke.ursula

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Visual Artist
Current:
Panorama Europa @theglucksman
Technologies of Peace @immaireland

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Thrilled to have some work in this incredible exhibition opening this week, Sep 11th @immaireland

I’ll also be taking part in a panel discussion with some wonderful artists and smashing IMMA curators reflecting on the themes of peace, conflict and recovery.

Technologies of Peace: Art and Transition in Contemporary Europe (1989–2026) This exhibition will focus specifically on the period between 1989 to the present day, and through the lens of artistic practices will draw parallels between Ireland’s complex political history with those of our European counterparts.

Artists: Marina Abramović, Ileana Arnaoutou, Nika Autor, Aleksandar Battista Ilić in collaboration with Ivana Keser and Tomislav Gotovac, Ursula Burke, Alán Carrasco, Jasmina Cibic, Lana Čmajčanin, Fábio Colaço, Phil Collins, Willie Doherty, Rita Duffy, Amanda Dunsmore, Petros Efstathiadis, Andrea Geyer, Igor Grubić,  Đejmi Hadrović, Petrit Halilaj, Anthony Haughey, Frances Hegarty, Saskia Holmkvist, Sanja Iveković, Sandra Johnston, Dragana Jurišić, Šejla Kamerić, Barbara Knežević, Siniša Labrović, Nicolas Lambouris, Latent Community, Manolis D. Lemos,  Glenn Loughran, Alastair MacLennan, Goshka Macuga, Petra Matić, Emily McFarland, Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, Petros Moris, Locky Morris, Alban Muja, Mairéad McClean, William McKeown, Vlad Nancă, Eleni Odysseos, Claudia Pagès Rabal, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Karol Radziszewski, María Ruido, Edita Schubert, Paul Seawright, Driton Selmani, Indrė Šerpytytė, Slavs and Tatars, Mladen Stilinović, Bojan Stojčić, Anne Tallentrie, Kostis Velonis, Vangelis Vlahos, Cathy Wilkes, Mona Vatamanu and Florin Tudor.

Technologies of Peace: Art and Transition in Contemporary Europe (1989–2026) opens to the public on Saturday 12 September 2026.

Third image: Glimpse of work in progress.

☘️🧵🪡☘️🧵🪡 by @burke.ursula

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Experiments in porcelain and new work. Exploring ideas around imagined communities post conflict - wounding and repair.

Rococo Repair After Bernadette Devlin McAliskey
Porcelain and Textile
2026

💧💧💧💧💧💧💧

#porcelain #porcelainsculpture #textilesculpture #ursulaburke by @burke.ursula

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Embroidering pink tears that look a wee bit like jellyfish, or sperm or severed eyeballs apparently 🪼🪼🪼👀👀👀
#wip by @burke.ursula

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Panorama Europa opened yesterday at The Glucksman, beautifully curated by Fiona Kearney and Katie O'Grady. Delighted to have some work in the exhibition and to share space with a raft of gorgeous work and mega artists. So worth a visit 👀

Blue Sphinx Winged
Porcelain, Embroidery Thread, Fleece Wool & Polystyrene
2022

Blue Protest
Gouache on Fabriano
2022

Brown Riot
Gouache on Fabriano
2014

Pink The Disappeared
Gouache on Fabriano
2014

🧵🧶🪡🧵🧶🪡🧵🧶🪡
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@theglucksman Our new exhibition of Irish artists, Panorama Europa, opens this month - here is a sneak peek at some of the artworks on display 👀

Panorama Europa
Free entry/ suggested donation €5

Artists: Ursula Burke, Michael Canning, Sian Costello, Genieve Figgis, Claire Halpin, David Eager Maher, Rachel Fallon, Eleanor McCaughey, Isabel Nolan, Geraldine O’Neill

Curated by Fiona Kearney and Katie O'Grady

Panorama Europa presents the work of ten Irish artists who engage with traditions of European painting to explore contemporary identities and wider societal issues. The selected paintings, tapestry, sculptures and drawings reference works from Pre-Renaissance to Impressionism. The exhibition invites you to reflect on these art histories and consider how artists draw on diverse pictorial tropes to create new modes of representation.

Sign up to our newsletter to find out more - just follow the link in our bio 🔗

Panorama Europa is supported by University College Cork, The Arts Council of Ireland and private philanthropy through Cork University Foundation.

@universitycollegecork | @artscouncilireland taken in The Glucksman by @burke.ursula

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Siren @wexfordartscentre is in its last week. Big thanks to everyone who has visited and for the kind thoughts and messages.

Massive thanks to the incredible team at the Wexford Arts Centre who so kindly and warmly took care of me and the work. Much gratitude to curator Catherine Bowe for her super gracious and wonderful support - all class acts ❤️

Siren is part of a @highlanesgallery National Tour who so kindly supported my mad caps plans.

💚🍀💚🍀💚🍀💚

1&2- The Politicians
Embroidery Sculpture

3- Flying Red hand of Ulster
Mosaic

4- Arab Spring
Porcelain Sculpture

5- Weeping Mosaic

6-Vestige
Porcelain sculpture

7- Centaur
Porcelain sculpture

8- Weeping Amphora
Terracotta Sculpture

#softsculpture #porcelainsculpture #mosaic by @burke.ursula

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Some more images of new work for Siren @wexfordartscentre - After the Venus of Willendorf.

This soft textile sculpture is inspired by the paleolithic Venus of Willendorf which was carved of oolitic limestone and was 4.4 inches tall - estimated to have been made 30,000 years ago.

Parts of the body associated with childbearing and fertility may have been emphasised such as the belly and hips with other theories suggesting that she is a representation of a woman looking down into into still water such as a pond, seeing an exaggerated version of herself, having no mirrors during this prehistoric period. The embroidery design on the sculpture itself is inspired by an antique tapestry that is part of the V&A collection.

📸- Claudio Nego
Siren continues until mid December. A @highlanesgallery National Tour. ❤️

#softsculpture #embroidery #ursulaburke by @burke.ursula

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Some images of Blue Sphinx Winged & Sphinx Tapestry installed in Siren @wexfordartscentre

Blue Sphinx is made of a porcelain bruised and wounded bust, a hand knit body with a hand embroidered chest plate. The embroidery, based on Andrea Mantegna's Oculus Fresco is reimagined with a Peace Wall embroidered down the centre, carving the space up in two. In form he is inspired by the French mannerist sphinx, but in myth the objective of the sphinx is to stand guard and ask riddles to those wishing to enter the city of Thebes, with death a certainty if answered incorrectly. 🩸🩸🩸

Siren continues until mid December and is @highlanesgallery National Tour

Blue Sphinx Winged 2023
The Sphinx Jacquard Tapestry 2025

📸: Claudio Nego

#softsculpture #porcelain #porcelainsculpture #ursulaburke by @burke.ursula

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Some images of new work for Siren @wexfordartscentre - After the Venus of Lespugue.

This soft textile sculpture is inspired by the paleolithic Venus of Luspugue which was carved of tusk ivory and was six inches tall - dated between 26,000 and 24,000 years ago. She was widely interpreted as a fertility symbol, due to the exaggerated breasts, hips and belly. Other interpretations suggest it could be a prehistoric selfie or a mother goddess symbol.
📸- Claudio Nego
Siren continues until mid December. A @highlanesgallery National Tour. ❤️

🪡🧵🪡🧵🪡🧵🪡🧵🪡🧵🪡🧵🪡🧵🪡🧵🪡🧵

#softsculpture #embroidery #sculpture #ursulaburke by @burke.ursula

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Happy to share some images of Siren @wexfordartscentre, the final venue in @highlanesgallery National Tour. For this beautiful venue I made some new tapestry work, allegorical in nature and some cutie patootie soft textile paleolithic Venus sculpture in tandem with existing work. Go see 👀

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Siren is an expansive exhibition that incorporates ceramic sculpture, textile sculpture, tapestry and mosaic sculpture. Greco-Roman inspired, surrealist mosaic sculpture take centre stage framed by major new monumental tapestry work.

Having lived for over twenty years in post-conflict Belfast, during and after the peace process, Burke has developed a unique continuum of exploration between political and aesthetic inquiries into trauma, wounding, and repair in her diverse practice. Her work creates an open system of correspondence between antiquity and modernity, introducing a larger poetic and political frame around the dysfunctional relations of trauma and violence that have qualified the building of empires.

These diverse formal investigations are born out of an exploration of epigenetics, especially within post-conflict contexts such as Northern Ireland.

📸: Claudio Nego

💧💧💧💧💧💧💧💧💧💧💧💧💧💧

#sculpture #porcelainsculpture #embroidery #wexfordartscentre #highlanesgallery #ursulaburke by @burke.ursula

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Siren opens today at the Wexford Arts Centre. This is the last leg of a magic Highlanes Gallery National Tour.

Open from 2pm and hope to see you there.

@wexfordartscentre @highlanesgallery

Busted Nose
Mosaic Alter Piece
2025

The Boat
Jacquard Tapestry
2025

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#mosaic #tapestry #sculpture #ursulaburke

🧵🪡🧵🪡🧵🪡🧵🪡 by @burke.ursula

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Ursula Burke @burke.ursula

Ursula Burke is an Irish artist whose work reflects her experience of growing up in the Republic of Ireland and later living in post-conflict Northern Ireland. Navigating two cultures, she builds a dynamic practice across Porcelain Sculpture, Soft Sculpture, Embroidery, and Drawing, exploring identity politics, inherited trauma, colonial legacies, and power dynamics. Her work bridges antiquity and the contemporary, using craft-based processes reimagined in a fine art context. Through unexpected materials and surreal juxtapositions, she challenges traditional modes of making.

Embroidery Frieze – The Politicians (2015–2024)
Embroidery thread and custom frame, 150 × 32 × 10 cm
This multi-panel, hand-embroidered series of documentary images sourced by searching “politicians fighting parliament.” Each panel represents a single country and is unchanged from the original image. The chaotic scenes evoke Renaissance or Baroque painting, mirrored by a Renaissance-inspired thread palette. Referencing historic works like the Bayeux Tapestry, the embroidery stitches mimic folds of fabric and contorted faces with staccato intensity. Threads hanging from the work isolate and amplify the tension between colour and line, bridging the frenzied battle for power inside the frame with its gentle dissolution as threads spill downward.

🎤 Join Ursula Burke in conversation with curator Aoife Banks and artists Shirani Bolle, Rachel Fallon, and Lucy Peters on Saturday, 6th September at 2pm in Luan Gallery for the Soft Surge Artists and Curator Talk.
Details in bio.

Soft Surge
📅 Fri 27 June – Sun 7 Sept
⏰ Tues–Sat | 11am–5pm, Sun | 12pm–5pm
📍 Luan Gallery
Free Admission

Curated by Aoife Banks

📷 @louishaugh

Supported by @artscouncilireland by @burke.ursula

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Dead excited to be currently living and working @immaireland as part of the Dwell Here Artist residency programme. It’s been a pleasure to be working alongside a host of super artists and to be part of an amazing intensive week of presentations, discussions, workshops and site visits.

Many thanks to @jan.hough and the wonderful team at IMMA for the cracker experience.

🍒🍉🍎🍓🫐 by @burke.ursula

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