Exhibition dates: 3 July – 30 July 2025


Late Night Art Belfast 
6:00 pm – 9:00 pm, Thursday 3 July 2025

Artist Talk
11:00 am – 12:30 pm, Thursday 10 July 2025

Exhibition Title: Inner Space, Outer Place

About Us:-

University of Atypical for Arts and Disability is the lead sectoral organisation in arts and disability in Northern Ireland. We are disabled-led, and take an empowerment-based approach towards d/Deaf, disabled, and neurodivergent people’s involvement in the arts, as audience members and creative practitioners. The Atypical Gallery is the only gallery space on this island dedicated to promoting professional artists who identify as d/Deaf, disabled, or neurodivergent. Our Artistic Director, Edel Murphy, is pleased to welcome you to our Art is Collective pop-up exhibition.
About Art is Collective

Art Is Collective is a multi-ability, multi-disciplinary group of artists. They meet every Thursday from 10:00 am until 2:00 pm in 2 Royal Avenue to support each other on their artistic journeys. The Collective emerged when artists Ngaire Jackson and Bronagh Lawson observed that some artists with disabilities or mental health issues needed more of a studio environment to develop their work. 
Art Is Collective provides a supported studio environment dedicated to fostering and nurturing the creative ambition and professional development of their artists. With the support of experienced and established artists including Alastair Mac Lennan and Cobie Moore, those who take part in Art Is Collective can realistically aspire to develop their professional arts practice in a nurturing and creative environment. Art Is Collective continues to develop, evolve and challenge misconceptions around arts, disability, mental health and participation.

About the Artist: Sarah McConnell

Sarah McConnell has been working with Bronagh and Ngaire for six years. She has shown work in several exhibitions across Belfast and held studio space in Belfast School of Art. Apart from the assisted studio time, Sarah says she keeps coming back to the group because of the social aspect to the meetings.
Sarah says her artwork has changed over the years as she has developed and settled on a specific palette. She mainly works in acrylic and watercolours, and occasionally in pastels. Her work is linked to place and nature. She documents the places she has been to through photography that she then works into her paintings.
Art Is Collective is very important to her. As well as the social side to the gatherings, Sarah’s confidence in herself and her work has grown significantly.

About the artist: Jeffrey Roberts

When Jeffrey is asked how long he has been with the group,  he jokes ‘too long’.He agrees with Sarah that being a part of the collective is a great way to meet nice people. 
Jeffrey has been drawing for years. He joined the Art Is Collective group when they were meeting in Castlecourt in 2023, and brought work from home to develop. He also had a studio space with the group when they were based in the Belfast School of Art. Jeffrey had also been drawing in 2 Royal Avenue on a regular basis. They had set up a table to facilitate this. When Art Is Collective needed to find a new space to continue working as a group, they followed Jeffrey to 2 Royal Avenue. Jeffery has been doing colouring in sheets for years but we encouraged him to follow his own idea of what art is and not colour in other peoples lines. Jeffrey sees his designs in his mind and then transfers the outlines onto a surface. He prefers specific types of felt fibre pens of varying thicknesses. He started working on cards and has expanded his range to work on wood and fabric.

Simulacrums, representations and abstractions of the artist’s body exist in a state of contradiction. As a prayer for wellness in spite of the inescapable nature of death, as a record of the artist’s existence and lived experience despite the rise of groups which would seek to erase it, as artefacts viewed in reverence bound to be forgotten. As reliquary, as oubliette.

This body of work also reflects on the ephemeral, but enduring, nature of pain. As the body keeps the score, the artist keeps the score through material depictions.

About the Artist:
Eibh Gordon is a queer visual artist practicing in Bangor. In 2024 she graduated from Ulster University with a Masters Degree in Fine Art, prior to which she graduated with a Bachelors in Textile Art, Design and Fashion.

Fundamentally her work translates the intangible terror of her lived experience into physical objects, often through the lens of the body. Through visceral forms the artist materialises their experience with sexual assault, death and pain. The artist uses her spiritual and philosophical references as a framework for experimenting, to give structure to the practice.

Shades of red and burgundy are a signature of the artist’s visual language, acting as a thread, connecting across her use of textiles, glass, and ceramic.

This visual language is further informed by sympathetic magicks and how this practice manifested historically through artefacts.

Exhibition dates: 1 May – 25 June 2025

Late Night Art Belfast 
6:00 pm – 9:00 pm, Thursday 1 May 2025
6:00 pm – 9:00 pm, Thursday 5 June 2025
Artist Talk
2:30 pm – 3:30 pm, Friday 9 May 2025

Hell or high water II opened on the 24th July 2023 at the Market Place Theatre Gallery, Armagh as part of the John Hewitt International Summer School, and continued until the 2nd of September 2023.

As with the previous paintings in this series, the work in this new exhibition Hell or high water III uses recycled coffee bean sacks as an oil paint surface. The paint is applied in raw gestures with impasto and drawn elements. The texture of the support forms an integral part of the painting surface, with Vikkie’s characteristic use of dark and light contrasts. The title of the exhibition signifies perseverance and persistence in the face of challenges and the paintings touch on decolonial concerns such as the climate crisis, deforestation, the destruction of biodiversity, the historic displacement of people, and the legacy of racial and sectarian violence. Elements of the compositions in Vikkie Patterson’s ongoing Hell or high water series were initially captured using photography before being reimagined on canvas. Formal characteristics of the coffee bean sackcloth she paints on, such as the text and the texture, emphasise thematic links to globalisation and colonisation, and look at the West through a critical lens, depicting introspective, anthropomorphic land- and streetscapes in portrait format.

About the Artist:

Vikkie Patterson is a painter and is also currently a PhD researcher at Ulster University Belfast School of Art. Her practice-based PhD examines disembodiment and decoloniality in the painting and present-day literature of Northern Ireland. Her research and practice have been informed by her degree from Trinity College Dublin in French and Germanic Studies, and time spent living in the French Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe.
Her work has been exhibited internationally. It is held in collections at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Annaghmakerrig, the African and Caribbean Support Organisation Northern Ireland headquarters in Belfast, and at the Kanu Nayak Art Foundation in Mumbai, India. A touring exhibition with the Drawing Box Collective forms part of the National Irish Visual Art Library in Dublin. Her work also forms part of private collections in Ireland, the United Kingdom, France, North America and Australia. Patterson is a previous recipient of the Deaf and Disabled Artist Support Fund awarded by University of Atypical.

Exhibition dates: 14 January – 21 February 2025

Late Night Art: Thursday 6 February 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Artist talk:
Friday 13 February 1.30pm (TBC)
British Sign Language interpretation.
All welcome.

Some of the work is the development of ongoing practice and for others the award has facilitated new and innovative projects.

We look forward to welcoming visitors to our open sessions on Tuesday 3 December to learn more about University of Atypical, what we do, the artists that we work with and the pathways they take.

The d/Deaf and Disabled Artists Support Fund is a dedicated annual arts development initiative that enables and supports d/Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent artists across a full range of art and craft forms to develop their professional practice. The award provides important funding for artists to produce new, high-quality work; receive training, coaching, mentoring; or buying time. Our 2024 DDASF awardees have produced research, or work, in many forms including script writing, new music, visual arts, sound art and textiles.

Exhibition Dates: Thursday 7 November – Friday 20 December 2024

Late Night Art openings

Thursday 7 November from 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Thursday 5 December from 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Brian Connolly was an Associate Lecturer in Fine Art, Sculpture, in the Belfast School of Art at Ulster University, Belfast, between 1995 and August 2022. He is a multi-media artist who has created artworks that often relate to place or context and which reflect key socio-political issues of the day. He employs a wide range of artistic processes, including performance art, public sculpture, installation art, art workshops and a range of collaborative projects.

Connolly has created solo performances, collaborative and group performances, interactive public performances, durational works as part of his performance art practice. He has performed & exhibited in diverse contexts throughout Europe, in North America and Asia.

In the early 1990’s Connolly developed a genre of performance art called ‘Install-action’, This uses performance action within complex spatial arrangements in order to generate installational spaces.

Since the mid 1990’s, he has created a series of international ‘Market Stall Performances. In these performances he directly interacts with the public by trying to sell a series of surreal, satirical, political and funny objects and engages them in a range interactive processes.

He has initiated and curated national and international events and projects, and has been involved with artist-run organisations throughout Ireland, including: Bbeyond, The Sculptors Society of Ireland, Visual Artists Ireland, Circa and Flaxart. He was a co-founder of Bbeyond and held the chair position on a number of occasions since 2001. He established and ran the annual Belfast International Festival of Performance Art from 2013 – 2022, with events held in Ulster University and inside and outside Belfast.

Connolly’s work is now part of the National Irish Visual Arts Library. It can be found at https://www.nival.ie/digital/collection/p21086coll20

Residency dates: 3 September – 3 October 2024

Exhibition Dates: 4 –25 October 2024

Late Night Art: Thursday 3 October from 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm

(Live Performance starting 6.30 pm)

Visitors are welcome to come and go in the gallery at any time during the live performance

Artist talk:

Friday 4 October at 2.00 pm.

British Sign Language interpretation.

All welcome.