Alumni Research Support Awards
| Tara Coakley, recipient of the 2024 (opens in a new window)Alumni Research Support Award, reflects on how the award enriched her MA research. | |
|---|---|
| I was fortunate enough to receive a School of Art History & Cultural Policy Alumni Research Support Award which aided me in the research for my MA thesis. My thesis investigated how women artists have re-imagined and interpreted subversive female figures from mythology in their art to present an alternative view of womanhood. To investigate this topic, I explored numerous case studies across history, spanning from the seventeenth-century Italian artist Artemisia Gentileschi to the twentieth-century Irish artist Dorothy Cross. I examined the historical contexts in which these artists were working, as well as how subversive mythological figures such as Eve, Lilith and Judith were used as projections of male fears. With the rise of feminist revisionist mythology, and the feminist re-interpretation of figures such as Circe and Medusa in media, I was intrigued as to whether women artists throughout history may have potentially subverted expectations by portraying these female figures in their work in alternative ways. |  |
| The bursary graciously provided me with the opportunity to travel to London in May 2024 where I carried out integral research for my project. I availed of the resources at the Warburg Institute which is renowned for its collection of books which investigate cultural history and the role of imagery in society. This allowed me to spend time in their collection where I had access to key texts which were otherwise difficult to attain. Furthermore, during my time in London, I visited the exhibition “Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920” at the Tate which highlighted women artists and their work throughout history and explored and how they overcame obstacles they faced within the art world. The research I undertook at the Warburg and my visit to the Tate’s exhibition ultimately inspired me to develop my research topic from the exploration of artists’ interpretation of the mythological figure Lilith, to an investigation of how women artists re-interpreted subversive female mythological figures. Overall, I found the experience immensely beneficial and thoroughly enriched my research. I am incredibly grateful to my supervisor Dr Róisín Kennedy for her support and encouragement and for Alumni Research Support Award for providing me with the opportunity to travel to undertake research. |
|
Previous Recipients
| 2023 |
|
|---|---|
| 2022 |
|