De Búrca uses drawing, film and installation to make work around the subject of territory, belonging and identity, looking at the legacies of political and social projects carried out by patriarchal systems. She examines their complexities through a feminist and post-colonial lens by mimicking imperialist methods and aesthetics. Her ‘sods’ hark back to Victorian botanical studies, but they take the conversation about the materiality of land and its cultural meaning further by transforming this knowledge-gathering system of scrutiny into a process of counter-scrutiny.
De Búrca’s practice is forensic in nature. She homes in, dissects and studies her subjects in minute detail. She begins with a period of intense enquiry and research, followed by a period of searching, recording and gathering carefully selected samples, which she then takes back to the ‘lab’ (studio) where the final renderings are produced.
Her drawings and short film- and video-works have been exhibited internationally such as in London, New York, Montreal, Tel Aviv, Warsaw and Berlin. She is represented by the Cristea Roberts Gallery, London and has works in the collection of the Arts Council of Ireland; Arts Council of Northern Ireland; the British Museum; Mead Gallery at University of Warwick, Coventry; National University of Ireland Galway; Glucksman Gallery at University College Cork, as well as in several private collections. Her drawing has recently been published in Phaidon’s series, Vitamin D3: Today’s Best in Contemporary Drawing and will be featured in Irish Art 1920–2020: Perspectives on a Century of Change, eds. Yvonne Scott and Catherine Marshall, 2022.
Miriam de Búrca lives and works in Galway, Ireland.