Bernadette Keating

Born: Dublin 1976, currently living/working in Laois. 

Education: Master Student (Meisterschuelerin) of Prof. Joachim Brohm, Photography and Media Class, Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig, 2015-2018. MA (Distinction) Documentary Photography, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, 2012. BA European Studies, University of Limerick, 1993-1997.

Exhibitions: Photo Museum Ireland, In Our Own Image: The Politics of Place, Group show, Dublin, 2022. House of Photography, Uneven Ground: Designing Places, Naming History, Naming Places, Designing History, Fotograf Festival X Group show, Prague, 2020. Museum of Contemporary Art, Modernism. Iconography. Photography., The Bauhaus and its Consequences - 1919 to 2019, Group show, Magdeburg, 2019. Sparkasse Foundation Gallery, Preview. Photography in Leipzig. Tomorrow., Group show, Leipzig, 2019. Beck & Eggeling International Fine Art, Picturing Realities: Constructed, Cropped & Reassembled, Group show, Duesseldorf, 2018. Galerie KUB, We cannot fight against our bread, Solo show, Leipzig, 2018. Embassy of Ireland, Solo Work, European Month of Photography Solo show, Berlin, 2018. HGB Leipzig Gallery, M/18, Group show, Leipzig, 2018. Gedenkstaette Marienborn / Memorial to Divided Germany, Operation Grenze, Group show, Marienborn, 2017.

Project Title: Líne

Over 300,000 km of hedgerows form a complex network of trees and shrubs on the island of Ireland. Most of these hedgerows were planted during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, following the Enclosure Acts passed by Parliament in London. These legal tools of large-scale land reform reconstructed land into a patchwork of privately-owned fields marked by permanent boundaries, and often rerouted and removed existing rights of way. Líne (2017-2020) is a conceptual photographic work that deals with the territorial boundaries of the Enclosure Movement and the contemporary rural landscape of the Irish Midlands. What began as a meditative walk with her camera on visits home became a sort of remapping of the boundary of the small farm in Laois where Keating grew up. The electric steel wire fence present in the landscape was transformed through off-camera flash, and the resulting linear disruption used as a motif throughout. These images, part of a much larger series, are included in her artist book "Of Bounds," which was published in 2022 by German publisher Lubok Verlag.

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