Sean Lynch - Received a first class honours degree in fine art sculpture in 2001

Since completing his sculpture degree, Sean Lynch has been involved in numerous projects and exhibitions. Working from a base in Limerick's Contact Studios (where Lynch is currently studio co-ordinator), a series of object-based pieces have featured in shows in Limerick and Dublin. Lynch is also a collaborator in Ouch!electro, a multi-disciplinary performance group, and has performed in Limerick's EVA 2002 exhibition, Cork's Intermedia 2002 and also in the Via Farini Gallery in Milan, Italy earlier this year.

Awards since completing the course have included the Tyrone Guthrie Regional Bursary Scheme and the Cregal Art Award, while also completing an artist in residence scheme for Young EVA 2002.

A series of temporary site-specific interventions around Ireland's cities has featured as part of Lynch's repertoire of artworks throughout the last year. One of the most successful of these occurred in Dublin in September 2001. As part of City Fabric, an international public art event ran by the Firestation Studios, a large aluminium sculpture was attached to the façade of a derelict church. By basing these artworks within the realm of urban theory, an alternative concept of public art is evoked by Lynch, where temporary artworks question the relationships that exist between art and architecture, their audiences and users, and the socio-economic agendas that often attempt to control these topics.

Critic Declan Long writes of Lynch's contribution to City Fabric, "the superimposition of forms and styles from different eras is the subject of Sean Lynch's work, which in this case took the form of a sculptural structure deriving from Baroque architecture being attached to a listed building on Dublin's Sean MacDermott Street. Walter Benjamin's comment that "it is common practice in baroque architecture to pile up fragments incessantly" seems relevant in this context, both in Lynch's own strategy of 'piling up fragments' and in the way that this listed building is protected but left as a ruin. Susan Sontag, writing on Benjamin, notes that "the nihilistic energies of the modern era make everything a ruin or fragment - and therefore collectible" and Lynch's work develops this theme in a fresh visual manner."
Amongst other projects, Lynch is currently working towards a public art project to be realised in Cork City this autumn.

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