Izzie Beirne

Izzie Beirne (b.1996) is a UK, London based artist from Newcastle Upon Tyne. Beirne studied her BA (Hons) Fine Art at Leeds Arts University (2019) and her MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths University in London (2023). Beirne has exhibited at Plan X Gallery, Guts Gallery, Unit London and OHSH Projects amongst others. Beirne won the Almacantar Award for her work in the postgraduate degree show (2023) and was shortlisted for the Acme Award and Global Design Graduate Show.

Beirne primarily works with painting alongside ceramics, creating works which deal with feminist themes of women’s safety, sexual violence and trauma, internalised punishment and then recovery and a reclamation of pleasure. Beirne’s process begins by making videos or researching films that deal with the subjects she is exploring, for example ‘The Cook the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover’ by Peter Greenaway. From these films Beirne finds stills to transform into paintings, creating canvases with frenzied movements, blur and variety of focus referencing the language of cinema. The paintings can simultaneously be ethereal and otherworldly contrasted with the sinister in the cropping of imagery, large hands caught in motion and separated from their bodies. Beirne uses ceramics to add to the level of discomfort permeating the work, creating pieces that reference decay, fragility and the grotesque. Ceramic rats, worms, maggots and plates of fruit and cream create an uneasy dialogue with the visceral cinematic paintings. This push and pull in the works capture the themes in her practice which are messy, gut wrenching and hard to digest.