Staff - MTU Crawford College of Art & Design

Colette Lewis

Lecturer

Fine Art & Applied Art

BIO

AREAS OF EXPERTISE: MOVING IMAGE, PHOTOGRAPHY and SOCIAL ART PRACTICE

Colette Lewis is a visual artist and educator working with the moving image, photography, artefacts, installation, and public engagement.

Her research engages with embodied and situated knowledge at the intersection of social and ecological contexts in urban and rural places. Work is often produced through collaboration and durational critical engagement within site-specific contexts. Current research investigates the ‘spectral’, situated knowledge, that resides in the narratives and materiality of place, in the reimaging of land use slowly, deeply, poetically, and politically. A recent project, PLoT (People’s Land Trust) with artist collaborators Marilyn Lennon and Elinor Rivers, investigates the future of urban land use in Cork city northside, bringing together ideas in prefiguration as practice, critical pedagogy and the commons.

Colette has exhibited and screened work nationally and internationally and is the recipient of numerous awards and residencies for her practice including the inaugural Platform 31 Scheme, Local Authority Arts Officers of Ireland (2021), UNIDEE Residency Programs, Cittadellarte, Biella, Italy (2021) and Creative Enquiry Artist Residency, Sirius Arts Centre (2019).

She graduated with a MA in Visual Art Practices, Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Dún Laoghaire, BA in Fine Art Sculpture, Limerick School of Art and Design and a Diploma in Field Ecology, University College Cork. Colette is currently a director/studio member with the Cork Artists Collective and a founding member of The Guesthouse Project.

PLoT (People’s Land Trust) Radical School ran a series of outdoors public engagement events in Cork city northside in July 2021. Project funded by the Arts Council of Ireland. A Cork City Partnership and Cork City Libraries supported project with production support from the Sirius Arts Centre.