Dublin-based artist Erin Quinn’s self-portraits invite viewers to consider the dilemmas faced by the inhabitants of a climate-altered world.
Dublin-based artist Erin Quinn’s self-portraits invite viewers to consider the dilemmas faced by the inhabitants of a climate-altered world. Quinn won first prize for her photographic series An Tuile/The Flood in the recent Climate and Health visual-art competition and exhibition run by the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI).
‘Using myself as the subject, there’s a real sense of bewilderment in each of the images, which I hope captures the powerlessness I was feeling,’ says Quinn. Taking her own photographs, including self-portraits, the scenes also blend in stills from news and social media. Quinn uses AI and other digital tools to heighten the drama and otherworldliness in the flooded environments. She describes it as ‘sort of like digital collage’, keeping her photography background to the fore. ‘By utilising AI technology, I’ve tried to create imagery that stretches the boundaries of imagination, showing the realities we may face.’
The open call in the RCPI competition invited entries from professional, emerging and amateur artists; from over 350 submissions, 48 were shortlisted, with a first prize of €2,000 and two other prizes of €300 each.
‘There is power in art to help us articulate our own awareness of climate change, which is the foundation for envisioning shared solutions that protect health and the planet,’ comments Professor Trevor Duffy, RCPI Head of Healthcare Leadership.
Born in Toronto, Quinn moved to Dublin in 1998. She gained a first-class honours degree at NCAD in 2008 in Photography and Digital Imaging. Though rooted in photography, she has a multidisciplinary approach and uses digital media in her visual art to explore themes of climate, popular culture, human connection and memory. She also makes conceptual olfactory works, creating scents, including Molly, based on Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), and Páis/Passion, based on The Meeting on the Turret Stairs (1864) by Frederic William Burton. She has exhibited internationally, was awarded the Curtin O’Donoghue Photography Award at the RHA in 2011 and was shortlisted for the 2014 Hennessy Portrait Prize.
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