The South East Venues Network SEVN are delighted to announce artist Chloe Brenan as the recipient of the 2024/2025 South East Venue Network (SEVN) Artist Bursary Award.
Visual artist Chloe Brenan has been announced as the recipient of the 2024/2025 South East Venue Network (SEVN) artist bursary for 2024/2025. Chloe, a native of Carlow, holds a Bachelor in Fine Art Print (distinction) and a MA from the Department of Fine Art Media, both from the National College of Art and Design. Additionally, she holds a Postgraduate Diploma (distinction) awarded from the Department of Philosophy at University College Cork. She recently completed an artist residency in Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris.
Chloe’s submission was selected by the SEVN committee from over 120 applications which included artists, curators, technicians and producers living and/or working in the South-East region. This was the largest number of applicants to the SEVN Bursary to date.
The €14,000 SEVN bursary awarded to Chloe will allow her to focus on the development of her practice which presently involves the creation of a super 8mm film essay titled The Box is Only Temporary. This new work explores the porosity of bodies – large and small – and their connection to their environments and is set against a back-drop of biodiversity collapse. Focusing on her father’s beehives and their surroundings in rural Carlow, it will look at the vulnerability of the honeybee to environmental pesticides and pollutants whilst drawing connections to language and imagery from literature and science.
Holding a deep understanding and appreciation for the natural landscape and the geographical position of the South-East, Chloe wishes to connect local people with their surrounding environments. Her knowledge and research into local biodiversity illuminates important global topics such as climate change and intertwined issues of social and ecological justice.
The South-East Venue Network (SEVN) was formed in 2019 and provides an informal support network for strengthening arts centre/venue operations and programme development that aims to further support artists and programme delivery in the region. The 2023/2024 recipient of the SEVN Artistic Bursary was Palestinian circus artist Fadi Zmorrod.
Comment from the selection panel:
The panel of selectors were impressed by Chloe Brenan’s clearly articulated submission which offered evidence of an impressive practice to date and an exciting opportunity to support an artist at a key moment in their career with work that is relevant and sincerely connected to the southeast region. The panel felt that this year’s submission to the SEVN Bursary Award was an incredible snapshot of the passion, talent and commitment that exists within this vibrant creative region. They felt that even further opportunities to develop and create work with artists would emerge from this process.
Quote from Chloe Brenan:
“I’m deeply appreciative of the opportunities afforded to me through the SEVN Bursary to spend time researching, filming and writing in my hometown, Carlow. I look forward to engaging with the team at VISUAL and other members of the South-East Venue Network as the work evolves. I’d like to dedicate this bursary, and the work that emerges from it, to the memory of my secondary school English teacher at St. Leo’s College, Ms. Jennifer Foley, who passed away last year. She helped myself and many other young women in the town to cultivate an ability to examine carefully and to describe thoughtfully, and she taught us that our observations had worth. It will always be such a privilege to have been her student.”
