“No-one’s Not From Everywhere”. A Talk by Irish Artist Nick Stewart

About the Artist Nick Stewart

Nick Stewart lived in Belfast until moving to Sheffield, in Yorkshire, in 1991. Through the 1980s he was deeply involved in the Irish art world, presenting performances and exhibitions from Derry to Cork, and many places in between. He was active and visible in the Belfast art scene that was, in spite of the conflict, developing a contemporary identity reflected in initiatives like an artists’ collective and an art magazine, Circa, that quickly established itself as Ireland’s forum for contemporary art.

Stewart performed and had solo exhibitions of drawings and installations at key venues such as, the Orchard Gallery, Derry, the Arts Council Gallery, Belfast and Project Art Centre in Dublin. During this time he also developed an international profile with a performance tour of North America in 1989, including a performance at New York’s iconic centre for contemporary art, The Kitchen. His work was also exhibited in Italy, Holland, Germany, India and Vietnam.

Since the 1990s he has created a diverse body of moving image works for galleries and screenings. Solo exhibitions at Chisenhale Gallery in London and the Arnolfini in Bristol established him as a respected artist in this field. In 2017 he completed his first feature length film, “… as sure as the rain”, co-written and edited with Mexican artist Helen Blejerman.

A wide range of interests and research informs his work but the question of place and identity in the context of Ireland is of particular concern to him. In 2007 he published the Arts Council England funded book, no-one’s not from everywhere, the culmination of several years of research into Irish artists and their views on Irish identity. In 2012 the John Hansard Gallery published, Which is The: 49 Views, the result of another ACE funded project focused on a ten-day journey along the Irish border.

More recent work is focused on a personal archive of video and journals extending across the past 20 years or so.  Works deriving from this resource explore memory, personal, societal and political.

Nick has been the recipient of numerous awards, residencies and commissions including, The Canada Council, The British Council, The British Film Institute, the Royal Festival Hall in London and both the British and Irish Arts Councils.