About
Visual Art
Kate Antosik-Parsons is an art historian and visual artist originally from the San Francisco Bay Area. Her art practice is concerned with memory and identity. Originally trained as a painter and printmaker, Kate is interested in process and the physicality that accompanies the process of creating. Many of her earlier works incorporate text, images and found materials such as fabrics that build layers of meaning. She is particularly intrigued by the ways in which these materials absorb and transmit familial memory and history. Her visual sensibilities were encouraged by her grandmother, Marcelina Antosik, a landscape painter. More recently, her work had shifted to incorporate photography. Her research, teaching and visual practice is expressly informed by feminism.
Exhibitions and Commissions
Kate trained as a painter and printmaker while at St. Mary’s College, Moraga. She participated in the Annual Student Art Show while at St. Mary’s (1999-2001). In 2003 she held her first solo show ‘Identity’ in the Front Lounge, Dublin, Ireland. After this exhibition she acquired a Polymetaal JS-60 printing press enabling her to continue experimenting with different print processes. She has completed several commissions: a drypoint for the American Association of University Women, East Bay Branch (2000) and three monoprints for Northgate Information Solutions, Dublin Ireland (2005). She participated in a group exhibitions ‘A Womb of One’s Own’ Oldcastle, Co. Meath (2008) and ‘Between Places and Spaces: Landscapes of Liminality’, Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin (June 2014). Kate's work has appeared on the covers of two books.
Research
Kate is a research associate of the UCD Humanities Institute (formerly the Humanities Institute of Ireland). Her interests include modern and contemporary art, gender, sexuality, identity, embodiment, memory, community arts, performance studies, Irish studies, literary and cultural studies. Kate’s current research is focused on maternal embodiment and reproductive politics in Ireland.
Kate holds a BA in Art from Saint Mary’s College, Moraga California (2001) and an MA in Women’s Studies from University College Dublin (2006). In 2012 she completed her PhD in the School of Art History and Cultural Policy, University College Dublin entitled ‘Remembering and Forgetting: Memory and Gender in Contemporary Irish Time-Based Art’. Kate was a doctoral scholar in the Graduate Research and Education Programme (GREP) in Gender, Culture and Identity (IRCHSS funded).
Kate has presented her research at numerous conferences including College Art Association (USA), Association of Art Historians (UK), National Women’s Studies Association (USA) and American Conference for Irish Studies (USA). In 2009 Kate worked with the Millennium Court Arts Centre (Portadown, NI) to conduct primary research for the commissioned Guerrilla Girls Project: Ireland. From 2010 to 2013 Kate was an editor of the peer-reviewed Artefact: Journal of the Irish Association of Art Historians. In 2012-13 she chaired the Per Cent for Art committee at Gaelscoil Cholmcille, an Irish language immersion primary school, for a commissioned art work. She is a member of various professional organisations such as CAA, AAH, IAAH, ACIS, AT Gender, Visual Artists Ireland and the Irish Studies Memory Network.
Kate is a co-convener of the Research Working Group, Dublin Bay North Choice and Equality Network. This research cohort is tasked with documenting, collecting and archiving material from the Repeal the 8th Amendment campaign specific to Dublin Bay North. The DBN Research Working Group is currently engaged in quantitative and qualitative research, oral histories, mapping projects and DBN media and outreach projects that reflect upon and critically engage the development of the Dublin Bay North Repeal the 8th/ Together for Yes constituency-based campaign and referendum victory.
Gallery
Writing
Art Writing / Reviews
Antosik-Parsons, Kate, ‘Review: Dublin Contemporary’, Artefact: The Journal of the Irish Association of Art Historians, Issue 5, 2012.
Antosik-Parsons, Kate, ‘Review: Fionna Barber’s Art in Ireland Since 1910’, Artefact: The Journal of the Irish Association of Art Historians, Issue 6, 2013.
Antosik-Parsons, Kate, 'Fleeting Breath: Martin O'Brien at Dublin Live Art Festival August 2017, in:Action Irish Live Art Review - https://inaction.ie/2017/10/12/fleeting-breath/
Antosik- Parsons, Kate, "Fertile Ground: Maternal Entanglements in the work of EL Putnam (excerpts)" December 2017, in:Action Irish Live Art Review, https://inaction.ie/2017/12/20/fertile-ground-maternal-entanglements-in-the-work-of-el-putnam-excerpts/
Antosik-Parsons, Kate, 'EL Putnam and David Stalling, Ember at The Complex', This Matters Now, Circa Art Magazine, March 2018. http://circaartmagazine.website/tmn2018/dr-kate-antosik-parsons-el-putnam-and-david-stalling/
Antosik-Parsons, Kate, ‘DIT Degree Show Review,’ Writer’s Choice, CIRCA Art Magazine, July 2018. https://circaartmagazine.net/dublin-institute-of-technology-degree-show-aoife-fogarty-2/
Academic Publications
Antosik-Parsons, Kate, ‘Bodily Remembrances: The Performance of Memory in Recent Works by Amanda Coogan’, Artefact: The Journal of the Irish Association of Art Historians, Issue 3, 2010.
Antosik-Parsons, Kate, ‘Masculinity in Crisis: The Construction of Irish Masculinities in Willie Doherty’s Non Specific Threat’, Irish Masculinities: Critical Reflections on Literature and Culture, Eds. Caroline Magennis and Raymond Mullen, Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2011.
Antosik-Parsons, Kate, ‘Noah’s Ark by Elizabeth Rivers’, Eire-Ireland, 47, 3 & 4 Fall/Winter 2012.
Antosik-Parsons, Kate, ‘Pauline Cummins’, ‘Willie Doherty’, ‘Louise Walsh’, Volume III: Sculptors and Sculpture, 1600-2000, Art and Architecture of Ireland, Royal Irish Academy and Yale University Press, 2014.
Antosik-Parsons, Kate, ‘Mobility, Migrancy and Memory: Visualizing Belonging and Displacement in Jaki Irvine’s The Silver Bridge (2003)’, Heritage, Diaspora and the Consumption of Culture: Movements in Irish Landscapes, Eds. Rebecca Boyd and Diane Sabenacio Nititham. London: Ashgate, 2014.
Antosik-Parsons, Kate, ‘Caoineadh na mairbh: Vocalising Memory and Otherness in the Early Performances of Alanna O’Kelly’, Nordic Irish Studies Journal, Special Issue: Cultural Memory and the Remediation of Narratives of Irishness, 2014.
Antosik-Parsons, Kate, ‘Suppressed Voices: The Suffering and Silencing of Irish Institutions Abuse Survivors in Áine Phillips’s Redress Performances’, Etudes Irlandaises, 2014.
Antosik-Parsons, Kate, ‘‘The Development of Irish Feminist Performance Art in the 1980s and the early 1990s’ The History of Performance Art in Ireland, Ed. Aine Phillips, London: Live Art Development Agency and Reaktion Books, 2015.
Antosik-Parsons, Kate, ‘The Visibility of Women’s Ageing and Agency in Suzanne Lacy’s The Crystal Quilt (1987) and Silver Action (2013)’, Ageing Women in Literature and Visual Culture: Reflections, Refractions and Reimaginings, eds. Margaret O’Neill, Michaela Schrage-Frueh, CathyMcGlynn, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
Antosik-Parsons, Kate, ‘A Body is a Body: The embodied politics of women’s sexual and reproductive politics in Irish art and culture’, Transnational Perspectives of Sexual and Reproductive Rights, ed. Tanya Bahkru, New York: Taylor & Francis, (IN PRESS 2019).
McDonald, Niamh, Kate Antosik-Parsons, Karen E. Till, Gerry Kearns and Jack Callan, ‘Campaigning for Choice: Canvassing as Feminist Pedagogy in Dublin Bay North’ After the 8th: Implications and Futures, eds. Kath Browne and Sydney Calkin, London: Zed Books, (Forthcoming May 2019).
Creative Publications
Antosik-Parsons, Kate, ‘Burden’, ‘Muse I’, ‘Revenge of Clytaemnestra’ Multimedia Visual Images, Intersections: Women’s and Gender Studies in Review Across Disciplines, Journal of University of Texas, Issue 5 “(The) future (of) feminisms”, 2007, 61-63. http://www.intersectionsjournal.com/issues.html
Antosik-Parsons, Kate, ‘My Motherly Stigmata’, ‘Time’, ‘I will mark this moment’, ‘On the experience of live art’, New Anthology of Migrant Writers in Ireland, Ed. Theophilus Ejorh, Drogheda: Choice Publishing Company, 2012.