Dr Yvonne Scott
Fellow Emerita

Former Associate Professor in Art History and Director, Triarc (Trinity College Irish Art Research Centre)

Research interests

I am particularly interested in two, overlapping fields of research. The first of these, Modern and Contemporary art has led to various projects (exhibitions, symposia, and publications) on artists from Ireland and elsewhere, as diverse as Francis Bacon, Louis le Brocquy, Michael Craig-Martin, Paul Klee, Brian O’Doherty/Patrick Ireland, Georgia O'Keeffe, Camille Souter, Jack Yeats, and others, and on a range of themes relevant to landscape and environment, climate change and ecological challenges. Research projects have attracted a number of prestigious grants and awards in support.

My research focuses in particular on agendas in the representation of landscape and environment, from an eco-critical perspective engaging a range of disciplinary approaches to interpretation, from philosophy to cultural geography. I was involved from its inception to the Royal Irish Academy Irish art project, eventually as contributor and chair of the advisory board for Volume V published by RIA and Yale University Press (2014), and am co-editing (with Catherine Marshall) a book of critical essays on aspects of Irish Modern and Contemporary art. I am currently working on a book on landscape and environment in Irish art.

Selected publications

‘The (Over)View’, in Donal Maguire (ed), Shaping Ireland: Intervention and Representation in Irish Landscape, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin: 2019.
‘Living Water: Irish Artists and Ecology’, Études Irlandaises/French Journal for Irish Studies, 2019 (in press).
‘The Landscapes of (Patrick) Ireland: Strolling with the Zeitgeist and “Assymmetrical Twins”’, in Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes (ed), Brian O’Doherty/Patrick Ireland: Word, Image and Institutional Critique, Valiz, Amsterdam: 2017.
‘Anne Madden: Ariadne’s Thread’, in Barbara Dawson (ed), Anne Madden; Colours of the Wind – Ariadne’s Thread, Dublin: 2017.
‘Charles Harper: ‘a new precision?’’, in Charles Harper, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin: 2017. ‘Ruins in Ireland, Ireland in Ruins: Symbols and Semiotics in Irish Visual Art’, Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, Revue Canadienne d’Etudes Irlandaises, Special Issue, Irish Environmental Humanities, 40, 2017, pp.142–173.
‘Reconstructing the Raft: Semiotics and Memory in the art of the shipwreck and the raft’, in Tricia Cusack (ed), Framing the Ocean, 1700 to present – the sea as social space in western art, Ashgate, London: 2016, pp 165–180.
Various essays on Dorothy Cross, Paul Henry, Kathy Prendergast, Patrick Scott, in Fintan O’Toole, et al, Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks, Irish Times and Royal Irish Academy, Dublin: 2016.

Supervision

I have supervised research at post-graduate level, on themes relevant to Modern and contemporary art, including around a dozen PhD theses, and numerous masters at MLitt and MPhil level. I have also mentored a range of Post-doctoral research projects. I have acted as external or internal examiner for post-graduate theses for a range of universities.

Teaching

My teaching experience over the years has involved the development of courses and modules at all levels, primarily in the History of Art Department, Trinity College Dublin, over more than twenty years, including initiating (with Prof Roger Stalley) the taught masters, the MPhil in Irish Art History ahead of its formal introduction in 2003, which I directed until 2015. Over the years, I have had to opportunity to present lectures at a range of universities, art institutions, museums and galleries across the country and abroad, as well as organising and participating in tours and site visits including for students at Trinity and for the Irish Association of Art Historians.

My lecturing experience ranges from the Renaissance to the present, and has included focused modules on Northern art from 15th to 17th centuries. My specialisation however is in aspects of Modern and Contemporary art, and I have designed courses at both undergraduate and post-graduate levels in global and international art, as well as more geographically focused modules on themes and issues in Irish art over the last century or so. Much of my teaching and supervision has related to my research interests in eco-critical themes of all periods, but in particular contemporary art addressing all aspects of landscape and environment.