Wednesday 13 February
Artist talk with Sally O’Dowd - Conor Lecture Theatre, Belfast School of Art - starts at 3.15pm
Please arrive between 3:00pm and 3:15pm and one of the team will guide you to the lecture theatre.

Monday 17 February
Student Performance Art Workshop with Evamaria Schaller - Ledger Studio, Royal Avenue. (This is not open to the public)

Thursday 20 February - Live performances
3.30 pm - 7.45 pm - Francis Fay - SHALL WE DANCE - Ledger Studio, Royal Avenue
8.10 pm - 8.15 pm - Shauna Violet - Gravity - Ledger Studio - video premiere screening - 8:10 pm start - link to Video Premiere
8.30 pm - 9.30 pm - Aísling O’Beirn - Look Up (Never Punch Down) - Cathedral Quarter Night Time Walk - meet at the Ledger Studio from 8.20 pm

Friday 21 February - Live performances
11.30am - Áine Crawford - 2 Royal Avenue - 1hr

12.00pm - Sorcha Keeve - 2 Royal Avenue - 30mins

12.30pm - Nicole Goodwin - Sus Scrofa - 2 Royal Avenue - 20mins

1.00pm - Leo FitzSymons - prying eyes on private moments - 2 Royal - Avenue - 30mins

1.30pm - Christine Donaghy - Ochón/Weep - 2 Royal Avenue - 30mins

2.00pm - Sara Monteiro - My Body Hurts 2.5 - 2 Royal Avenue - 30 mins

2.30pm - Sarah McLean - Labiaplasty - 2 Royal Avenue - 1hr

2.30pm - Rhia Marie - 2 Royal Avenue - 30mins

3.00pm - Cuánn McAuley - Disposition - 2 Royal Avenue - 10mins

3.30pm - Madison Agnew - 2 Royal Avenue - 30mins

5.30pm - Sally O’Dowd - An Péist agus on Fuinseóg The Worm and the Ash - Glass Box Gallery, UU - 1hr

6.45pm - Evamaria Schaller - Ledger Studio, University of Atypical - Less that one hour

Áine Crawford (b. 2003) is a Belfast based multi-disciplinary artist, currently in their second year studying Fine Art at the Belfast School of Art.

Concerned with exploring the female nude in a visceral and raw way based on their own personal experience of feeling restrained within the limits of their body, they use performance as a means of amplifying their sensorial experience to test these limits. These performances are born from spontaneous sketches of figures in liminal blank domestic settings, along with coinciding “word vomit” text, they have acted as a form of escapism from the domestic space through this memory driven recreation.

Madison Agnew is a multidisciplinary artist, in her final year studying Fine Art at the Belfast School of Art. In her work she employs a range of media including installation, painting and performance. Agnew’s work focuses on the body, and its relationship to natural elements such as water and land. Her work also touches on the interplay between these natural forces and interpersonal feelings. Emotion, memories and past experiences are a driving force within Agnew’s performances as she seeks to evoke a communal understanding and sensibility of the aforementioned themes.

Christine Donaghy uses a wide range of processes and materials in her art practice. She explores themes centred around human experience and existence. 

She uses live performance as a more direct way to encounter the viewer and to create a space for an exchange of ideas.

Shauna Violet (b. 1999) is a multidisciplinary Irish artist based in Belfast. Her work is currently exploring the figure of the witch as a feminist archetype. By merging fundamental ceremonial magick practices with elements of sculpture, performance art, and installation their work aims to provide a sacred space to cast a spell with the audience.

For BIFPA Shauna Violet is showing a recorded performance that concentrates on the unpredicted complexities that occur due to emotional weight via performance art, chanting, and clay.

Evamaria Schaller

Evamaria Schaller is an Austrian performance & media artist based in Germany. After earning her diploma at Academy of Media Arts Cologne, she received inter/national awards and completed residencies like Atelier Galata in Istanbul, Künstlerdorf Schöppingen, Koganecho AIR Yokohama and Atelierhaus Salzamt Linz (in 2025) and exhibits & performes internationally. Evamaria has established international performance art networks, including PAE Aktionslabor, collaborates on projects like the artist duo JELLYSPOOR or the queer-feminist group BLENDING Q alongside her solo work. Her multidisciplinary practice includes performance, film, and installation, aiming to translate “time into images in space.” Her works explore gender identity, human relationships with nature, and sociopolitical representation.

 instagram: https://www.instagram.com/evamariaschaller/ 

 website: www.efeumaria.com 

Image credit: EvamariaSchaller | PerformanceFoto | ChrisRáiki | 2024

Francis Fay

Francis Fay is an Irish artist active on the domestic scene since 2012, and whose performance and curatorial projects have been presented nationwide at galleries, theatres, libraries and public spaces. 

Recent projects include 'Your Self-Made Super Human', his 2019 performance at Wexford Arts Centre. Francis's video trilogy, 'Queering the Landscape', developed at a Tyrone Guthrie Centre residency, premiered the same year at the 'Diffraction' screening,126 Gallery, Galway. In 2016, he was commissioned by Arts Council Ireland to perform at historic Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin in 'Future Histories', a response to the 1916 Rising.

Co-founder and curator of http://livestock-art.com/, a platform building audiences and promoting Irish performance art, Francis was also co-director of the Dublin Live Art Festival 2015. He gives annual performance arts workshops to graduates of Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art and Design.

The themes of his photographic montages include self portraiture and cityscapes, specifically that of the Dublin imaginary. 

Image courtesy of the artist

Sally O’Dowd

I studied in London and Cyprus. My practice has had a strong performance leaning since Middlesex University London, when my tutors, primarily Jean Fischer and Teresita Deniz , encouraged me to consider recording the movement, pace and action I was exploring through drawing, in film and performance instead. We were also encouraged to self initiate projects and events. Later, while working for Damien Hirst, I was surrounded by artists and makers and we started creating events together. When I returned to Ireland in 2009 an incredibly active arts organiser friend, invited me and my cousin to curate a festival tent together and that was the start of trans-art.cavan. We have been curating exhibitions since 2011 and I have been actively participating as an artist also. We established the Townhall in Cavan as a permanent space for arts.

I moved to Belfast in September 2016 and have had a family here since. At the same time, I was a founding member of Vault Artist Studios where I continue to work and programme the gallery. Last year I received the Artist Career Enhancement Scheme from Arts Council of Northern Ireland and my drawings are currently on display in the Ulster Museum, Belfast.

Aísling O’Beirn

Aísling O'Beirn is a Belfast based artist, her practice explores the relationship between art and science and manifests variously as sculpture, installation, animation and site-specific projects. Using both traditional means such as drawing and animations as well as a range of absurd sculptural devices, O’Beirn explores the celestial as an ecologically active agent in urgent need of protection and preservation from the ravages of aggressive short term economic opportunism. Projects have investigated ideas around entropy, order, disorder and balance exploring how laypersons try to understand scientific and mathematical ideas in political terms.

Information taken from The MAC website where there is more information about her exhibition that opens on 17 Apr 2025.

Charlotte Dixon - Char is a mixed-media performance artist born in Bangor and now based on the North Coast, currently pursuing studies in Ceramics at Ulster University. Their artistic practice integrates diverse media, often featuring ceramics as a central element in performative works. Char focus continues to be on gender non-conforming bodies and challenging gender norms. While Char’s earlier focus explored the body’s role in performance, their evolving practice now places objects at the heart of their creative expression, shifting the narrative from the human form to the material world in dynamic and thought-provoking ways.

Sara Andrade Monteiro (b.1978, Lisbon, Portugal) is a Northern Ireland-based Artist. Sara’s artistic practice encompasses a diverse range of media including painting, sculpture, lens-based art, sound, performance, and short film. She is inspired by shock art, dark humour, music, music videos, horror movies, horror house movies and TV shows.Central to Sara’s thematic exploration is a profound engagement with personal narratives, particularly rooted in her traumatic experiences, introspective reflections, personal memories, and intense emotions. She intends to evoke a visceral response, shock, and captivate viewers by reflecting these elements in her work.

Sarah McLean is a multimedia artist with a focus on video, photography and performance. She uses props and her body to present ideas on politics, consumerism and psychology through a feminist lens. She has a fascination of the body and what we choose to do with them, and what drives those choices. She is particularly interested in plastic surgery and the beauty industry, and where the boundaries of these spheres lie. There is humour within her work that is used to soften some of the harsh themes she works with. She aims to embrace the weird and wonderful, leaning on absurdism to make her arguments. Her work is an evolving investigation of how human behaviour and societal standards affect each other.

Rhia Marie is a multidisciplinary artist in her second year of Fine Art at BSOA, working with sculpture, performance, and video. Her practice explores the clash between science and religion, the relentless pursuit of knowledge, and the questioning of so-called universal truths. With a rebellious spirit, her work challenges authority—both governmental and religious—using sharp wit and humor, particularly through video pieces. By blending satire with serious inquiry, Rhia invites audiences to engage with complex ideas in an accessible and thought-provoking way, sparking conversation about power, belief, and the nature of truth.

Cuánn McAuley (b.2003) is a Belfast-based artist, currently in their 2nd year studying Fine Art (BSoA) with a cross discipline practice. He works autobiographically, looking at relationships with other people, the natural world, self and personal experience. With a background in interpretive, contemporary dance and acrobatics, He uses the body to convey concepts born from experience tackling themes of identity, anticipated moments, impermanence and resistance.

Sorcha Keeve is a Belfast based artist currently in their final year studying Fine Art at UUB, specialising in sculpture and lens. Their work explores transformation, expression and the endless possibilities of gender. Often putting themselves at the forefront of their work, the artist uses performance and photography to manipulate perceptions of the body and simultaneously enhance traditional binaries. 

The artist utilises internal conscious in order to confront and confuse the external; often contrasting humour with darker undertones.

Nicole Goodwin (b. 2004) is a female Northern Ireland based artist that is currently in their second year of study at BSOA. She has a multidiscipline practice that is focused on sculpture and includes painting, photography and film. Using a variety of materials, her work explores themes around the human body, psychology and trauma, using the physical act of creation as a form of self-healing: processing thoughts and emotions in a healthy and positive manner.

Leo FitzSymons is an Irish artist in his second-year studying Fine Art at BSOA. He works with multiple disciplines, using performance, painting, printmaking, and collage to explore ideas of human connection and communication. He's currently looking at experiences with addiction and obsession, as well the self-isolation that comes as a result of these struggles. The subjects of addiction and the ritualistic nature in which people can engage with them has inspired the performance Leo is working on for BIFPA. This BIFPA will be Leo's first public performance.