niamh gibbons

Niamh Gibbons is an artist and writer whose work explores themes of politics, protest, and personhood. Born in a house in the Black Country and now living, working, and sailing on her narrowboat throughout London and the West Midlands, she graduated with her BA (hons) in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art in 2023.

​Niamh's practice looks at art as protest and protest as art, questions the need of artistic and political institutions and aims to break down class-based barriers of entry to the art world. Niamh’s work looks at acts of protest and themes of political dissent; she is primarily focused on significant political events that have shaped the country in which she has lived and affected the family in which she grew up. Niamh believes that art should exist for everyone, not a select few, she often makes work and gives it away for free. Her audience is invited to participate in her interventions, to read, touch, take, and protest alongside the artist and in spite of the institution.

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Through her research-based practice, Niamh uses textiles, film, and paint to question our notions of identity through mediums such as writing, installation, and ephemera. She aims to understand and depict the developing British political landscape and question our notions of British identity and representations of the body politic. Niamh is able to explore and debate the holistic effectiveness of protest art in the institution– questioning the Art World’s desire to consume dissenting and radical art practice and how its laundering of opinion leads to cultural stagnation and degradation. The creation and maintenance of the contemporary surveillance state, the theatre of security that now permeates our everyday life and the behaviour and role of the government on the domestic and international stages is corroborated through the wholesale participation of the institution and art market. 

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If our knowledge of significant world events affects our understanding of our current political, legal, and social reality- how much do you know and recognise from history? How does your consumption of media inform your worldview? How can the artist create an effective artwork in an environment designed for commodification and alienation? Is it really an effective protest if you can wash away the remnants of the paint and reopen the gallery after the cleaner’s been around with her mop and bucket? Perhaps, Niamh asks, shouldn’t the artist strive to be more destructive?