Beautiful Apocalypse

Beautiful Apocalypse is a solo exhibition by artist Miriam de Búrca presented by Galway Arts Centre that combines a range of media to examine colonial and patriarchal legacies. Through drawing, wall paintings, collage and the ancient technique of verre églomisé, de Búrca toys with the vocabulary of colonial aesthetics, using strategies of mimicry and irony as political tools to critique the superiority of ‘high art’.  In a new film installation Suspended Scream, de Búrca collaborates with French Syrian artist Taïm Haimet (Winner of the RDS Visual Arts Awards 2023) to respond to an old tape de Búrca shot in 2005 while in Palestine, to interrogate conflicting issues around inheritance, privilege and negation. By looking through the lens of Western art, de Búrca points to the role that art has played in the legitimisation of colonial projects – and the power it also has to dismantle and decolonise these structures.

Miriam de Búrca studied Fine Art at Glasgow School of Art and the Ulster University, Belfast where she received an Award of Excellence for her practice-based PhD in 2010. Her drawings and film and video works have been exhibited nationally and internationally. She is represented by the Cristea Roberts Gallery, London and has works in the collection of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland; Arts Council of Ireland; the British Museum; Mead Gallery at University of Warwick, Coventry; National University of Ireland Galway; Glucksman Gallery at University College Cork, as well as in several private collections.