About
Stephen Burke is an Irish artist, curator and documentarian. He holds an MA in painting from the Glasgow School of Art (2018) and was recently awarded the Gilbert Bayes Award for early-career sculptors from the Royal Society of Sculptors (2025). Stephen is the founder of the social media platform Post Vandalism which archives art practices that explore the ideas and aesthetics of graffiti. The platform fosters support from a wide international community and inspired an edition of Kunstforum International, Germany's leading journal for contemporary art. Burke also co-founded the London based curatorial collective Pigeon Park, which organises large-format exhibitions in industrial spaces. This project was created in response to the post pandemic threat posed to artists’ working conditions in the wake of the Covid crisis. Stephen has completed residencies in Prague, Berlin, and London and exhibited work in institutions like Het Hem, Cromwell Place and the RHA. His work has also been exhibited in outdoor sculpture venues, including the UNESCO-listed Völklingen Ironworks.
Stephen’s work explores how cities are designed and how they shapes our daily lives. As cities are built with a growing focus on efficiency, he’s interested in how they can remain open to everyone. This involves looking at how rapid urban growth and changing social and economic conditions affect our cities, asking whether the spaces we share still remain truly public. In response, he creates studio-based works that explore the material possibilities of these environments through sculpture and painting, regularly using recycled materials. His aim is to have a positive impact on how people think about the places they inhabit.