artist residency
1 - 30 May 2025
exhibition 31 May - 5 June 2025
Richard Magee
“Just-easia came out of a chance encounter in 2021. Walking down Bishop Street I looked at the statue of Justitia on the courthouse’s roof and seen her usually two-sided scales had only one side left’.
Living with a printout photo of the broken sculpture for some years, Magee has spent time as Art Arcadia artist-in-residence at the U3A Foyle. Accumulated ideas about the scales, balance, or the allegorical figure of Justitia have been weighed against one another, reach- ing a kind of resolution.
Part of the exhibit is a modest hand-made book that acts as a surrogate for the artist and traditional statement. This is shown alongside sculptures, something Magee, usually a painter, has not shown before. This exhibition is the first solo exhibition of his work in Derry since he left.
Richard would like to thank his parents, his partner and all the volunteers and members of the U3A. Christine O’Kane in particular for being enormously accomodating and Locky Morris, Paul at London Book Arts and Damien Duffy for advice. Lastly and especially to Paola Bernardelli who makes everything at Art Arcadia happen in the first place.
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Originating from Derry, Richard Magee (b.1994) was introduced as a teenager to art practice by the Void Art School. From this he gratefully benefitted from being in an artistic community for the first time, while gaining exhibition, residency and artmaking experience. After this, he studied at the Slade School, London, graduating in 2017. Awarded a CW Boise Scholarship he used the award to visit and research Land Art sites in the deserts of the American South West in 2018.
This preceded a period of working in heavy industry in different UK cities before he returned to formal education in 2021 when he joined the class of Professor Jutta Koether in Hamburg, Germany. Off the back of this, the artist used EU funding to live and work in Vienna, Austria for a year to learn professional printmaking skills at Druckwerk Wien. Recently, Magee has returned to living in London, working as a school art technician and is enrolled as a doctoral candidate at the HFBK, Hamburg.
Selected exhibitions include, Coming of Age, ICAT Gallery, Hamburg, 2023-24 (group), Brief Marks 4 Zeit, (MA graduating exhibit) HFBK, Hamburg, 2023, XX-XX-XXXX, a duo show alongside Joseph Davies for Westwerk, Hamburg, 2023, Urgencies, CCArt, Derry, 2023 (group), Ruins, Magazzini Arte Contemporanea Gallery, Trapani, Sicily, 2022 (group), Trouble Frees, GAO Gallery, London, 2021 (solo).
He has been the recipient of numerous awards including, a scholarship from the Behörde für Wissenschaft, Forschung, Gleichstellung und Bezirke, Hamburg, 2022, a SIAP grant from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, 2020, a CW Boise Travel Scholarship, 2017, a Cass Painting Award, 2017, the Graham Robertson Travel Scholarship, 2016 and the Pankerd-Jones Memorial Prize in Fine Art, 2014
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This residency has been developed by Art Arcadia in collaboration with U3A Foyle.
Art Arcadia HEARTLANDS is supported by the National Lottery through the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.
Exhibition
