Art writing draws together many art forms, from visual art to philosophy to (art) history and literature, to create a genre that is as much about creative production as it is about critical discourse.
Join Nathan O’Donnell (PVA Journal) and Padraig Regan (2021 winner of the Burlington Contemporary Art Writing Prize) as they discuss writing about, with and as art, with artist and writer Meadhbh McNutt.
Nathan O’Donnell is a writer, artist, and one of the co-editors of the Irish journal of contemporary art criticism, Paper Visual Art. He has published fiction and creative non-fiction as well as critical work on modern and contemporary art; he has also edited and produced several project-based publications and zines and, in 2020, with Marysia Wieckiewicz-Carroll, he founded Numbered Editions, an experimental imprint for artists’ writing. He has been awarded artist’s bursaries from the Arts Council of Ireland and Dublin City Council, as well as artist’s commissions from IMMA, Dublin City Council, the Arts Council of Ireland, and South Dublin County Council. He is a curatorial associate at IMMA and a lecturer at NCAD and Trinity College Dublin, where he is also currently the recipient of a Samuel Beckett Creative Fellowship.
Padraig Regan’s debut collection Some Integrity was published by Carcanet in 2022 and was awarded the Clarissa Luard Award and shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. They the author of two poetry pamphlets: Delicious (Lifeboat, 2016) and Who Seemed Alive & Altogether Real (Emma Press, 2017). In 2015, they were a recipient of an Eric Gregory Award, and in 2020 they were awarded the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary Prize. They hold a PhD on creative-critical and hybridised writing practices in medieval texts and the work of Anne Carson from the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen’s University Belfast, where they were a Ciaran Carson Writing and the City Fellow in 2021. They are currently Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College Cambridge.
Meadhbh McNutt is an Irish artist and writer. Her practice traverses art writing, photography and installation. Meadhbh has exhibited internationally in Ireland, the UK, Hungary, Poland and Hong Kong. Her words and photographs can be found in various publications including Tank Magazine, Circa Art Magazine, HeadStuff and the Visual Artists’ News Sheet.
