Stephen Doyle

Elen (Anonymous Dyke), 2017

Stephen Doyle

• Mixed Media on Canvas
• 120 x 120 cm

• Artist Statement

  The work presented is a commentary on queer culture’s co-existence with heteronormality.
  The space is an interpretation of how the queer community is viewed, how one’s perspective can be tainted by society’s homophobic undertones. The viewer is forced to consider a sense of self within this environment. The portraits of the LGBTQ within the space are altered by being observed with the use of opposing mirrors. Those featured are Russian citizens who have each in some way experienced segregation and oppression because of their surrounding culture. This degradation has taken the form of physical violence, imprisonment, unemployment and abandonment from family and friends.
  The presence of these queer identities in the work signals a defiance to the mainstream and an embrace of difference, uniqueness, and self-determination. A recognition of their existence.

   

  Artist Bio

  Stephen Doyle is a Cork-based artist and graduate of Crawford College of Art and Design (2017). The artist is exploring issues of queer identity through the relationship between figuration and the politics of representation. Doyle makes figurative depictions of LGBTQIA+ people, and often includes objects in the paintings, a gesture of ‘othering’ the art that mirrors the subject matter it investigates. Painting, and portraiture in particular, is associated with the iconography of power (for example politicians and religious figures), and consequently with mainstream worldviews, of which queer identity and culture have always been excluded. By invoking them, Doyle makes an ironic comment on the subalternisation of the existence of the LGBTQIA+ community, and simultaneously does their part to illuminate it. Recently their work has incorporated subjects of adversity through community based projects and psychoanalytic approaches of traumatic events relative to growing up queer in Ireland. This is an attempt to create public discourse around shared struggles and too evoke a sense of solidarity amongst the queer community within a national narrative They are the recipient of two International Art Prizes 'Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize' and 'Sunny Art Prize'. They were also shortlisted for the Zurich Portrait Prize, the work was later acquired by Crawford Art Gallery making it the first piece in the National Collection to discuss transgender/queer identity. They have had multiple solo exhibitions in Cork, Dublin, London. Also, secured residencies with Backwater Artist Studios, Harmony Art Gallery, Butler Gallery and Cork Pride. Doyle has been granted the Visual Art Bursary Award (2020) by the Arts Council of Ireland, a second piece added to the National Collection of Ireland (2021), included in the Art History syllabus for the Leaving Cert and added to the peer panel for the Arts Council of Ireland.