Artist Statement

Joelene is a Belfast-based multidisciplinary artist whose practice centres on contemporary portraiture. Her most recent work primarily utilises dry mediums, including charcoal and chalk, which she has used to explore representation, repetition and ideology. She explores the tension between abstraction and figuration, using material and form to respond to the conceptual and affective demands of each subject.  Earlier work in ceramics explored sight and sound, liminality, social structures and integration.

Her work is underpinned by rigorous, research-led enquiry, integrating thematic, contextual, and material investigation throughout the creative process. This extends to a critical engagement with the properties of the medium, in which process and materiality are integral to meaning.

Addressing socio-political concerns such as transformation and systems of value, her recent portraiture is defined by a dialogue between construction and disruption.  Operating across two interrelated methodologies, Joelene uses conventional additive drawing and erasure as a generative, subtractive process.  This oscillation establishes a sustained tension between presence and absence, wherein images are constructed either through accumulative mark-making or through acts of removal, with the eraser functioning as an active agent of production. Erasure operates as a generative act, producing a sustained tension between presence and absence.  The interplay between addition and subtraction reflects the conditions of image-making in an era defined by reproduction, circulation, and visual excess, where images are both continually produced and simultaneously eroded. 

Situated within a feminist framework, her work engages with historical photographic imagery to examine the circulation and transformation of images across time. In dialogue with the concept of simulacra, her practice reflects on the instability of representation and the shifting relationship between image, perception, and reality.

Continuing this exploration, Joelene anticipates an exploration and integration of other materials incorporated to extend these themes.  She aims to create a space for reflection rather than fixed interpretations, extending her practice to include ceramics and paintings. 

Exhibitions                 

Prologue                     2026                Group Exhibition                    Ulster Presents

Pulse                            2025                Group Exhibition                     Queen Street Studio

Degree Show              2024                Group Exhibition                    Ulster University

‘Foundation’               2020                Group Exhibition                    Arts for All

Awards         

Scarva Ceramics Award                                                    2024                Scarva Pottery Supplies

Remembering Through Healing Award                      2024                Remembering Through Healing

Academic Opportunity Scholarship Award                2021                Ulster University

Collections                  

Private Collector        Band of Peace                         2022    20x20cm         Acrylic on Canvas

Private Collector        Family Dysfunction                2020    60x60cm         Acrylic on Canvas

Private Collector        Son of a Mother                      2020    100x66cm       Acrylic on Metal