Marilyn Lennon is an artist and educator, for almost two decades she has worked predominantly through social art practice. She is a lecturer in Fine Art at Crawford College of Art and Design, MTU, Cork. Previous to this she developed and co-directed a Taught Masters programme in social art practice (MA SPACE) at Limerick School of Art and Design (LSAD), LIT, Limerick. (2010-2021).
Her art practice is situational, process based, durational and collaborative. The artwork considers the complex ecologies of place and the co-development of new situated practices initiated in both urban and rural contexts. The creative outcomes are actions, artefacts, situations and sites of exchange.
She has a MA in Ceramics from the National College of Art and Design. Her doctoral research at the Interaction Design Centre with Prof Liam L. Bannon, examined the contribution artists and designers make in interdisciplinary co-design projects with a focus on 'Reflective Prototyping'. More recently in 2021 she completed a continuing professional development course, Commissioning and Curating Contemporary Public Art by Valand Academy at University of Gothenburg, in partnership with Public Art Agency Sweden and the University of Arts Helsinki.
In 2021 she began a new artistic collaboration with artist Sean Taylor, The KinShip project. The KinShip project is a social art project based in Tramore Valley Park, a remediated city landfill site in Cork city which was opened in 2019 as a public park. The project is longterm and offers artists and communities an opportunity to gather, and to respond creatively and critically to the challenges of the ecological crisis. This is one of 15 projects in Ireland that are being funded by the Creative Climate Action fund through Creative Ireland.
Since 2018 she is also in a working partnership with artists Colette Lewis and Elinor Rivers. They are currently working on a social art project in Cork city; PLoT: Peoples Land Trust, which reimagines future sustainability and urban land use. The project brings together a radical school and collective models of land ownership in a co-creative social art project which has received the Art in Context Research and Development Award, Cork City Council (2020) and Artist in the Community Research and Development Award, Arts Council of Ireland (2020) and recently the Arts Council of Ireland, Arts Participation Project Award funding (2021).
In 2020, along with six others she founded CONJUNCTION – a new globally dispersed collective of 25 mid-career and established curators, artists, designers, educators, and public arts practitioners who first met in January 2020 while attending the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Previous long term projects include - WayMarkers, Mapping Beyond Borders a long term project she began in the years just before the UK Brexit vote, which engaged in the collaborative mapping of hikers routes that criss-crossed the IRL/UK border on the island of Ireland. This evolved from working with the Knockatallon Ramblers hiking club who have a particular perspective of the border between rural Co. Monaghan and the adjoining counties across the border. Together they worked through artistic, participatory and collaborative methods to create a counter map or counter narrative of place. This artistic enquiry led to the co-development of a prototype online community map.
The social art project, SpiritStore Art Cafe, self-commissioned and curated by Marilyn, brought together Limerick city based collaborators to negotiate, renovate, occupy and community manage an empty iconic public house, the Sarsfield Bar, Limerick. It was opened as a city centre social space during the Irish economic crash hosting over seventy programmed events giving access to the site for co-production, discussion, performativity, social gathering and exchange.
Marilyn joined the National Sculpture Factory Board of Directors in 2021. She is a member of the Cork Artists Collective since 2017.
