Vera Ryklova is a visual artist who works in lens-based media and who has been developing her practice over the past eight years. 

In 2022 Vera was awarded Making and Momentum Artist Prize. In 2020 she was one of five Irish Talents that represented PhotoIreand at FUTURES, a Europe-based platform for photography. In 2017 she won the Hotron Art Works Prize for work by a recent graduate and in 2016 she was shortlisted for the Hennessy Portrait Prize, which exhibited at the National Gallery of Ireland.

 

Vera presented three solo exhibitions as well as exhibited in several group shows held in Ireland and the UK, including the FiLiA Feminist Conference. Her work has been featured in photography journals and art publications and is included in pubblic art collections by the OPW State Art Collection, Trinity College Dublin and The Arts Council Ireland. 

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Her activities are also engaged in curatorial practice. As a curator she presented two group exhibitions in Dublin.  

In her practice Vera explores the concept of the self and the events that impact its social construction. She performs to the lens and produces photographic and video self-portraits, using the form of the series, as well as integrates collaboration into her work. Self-portraiture is not necessarily a genre she focuses on; it rather is the method she currently employs to explore her subject. She uses the camera as a distancing device that may allow her to experience a state of catharsis. The link between the artistic execution and the liberating emotional discharge is also at the centre of her interest.

Originally from the Czech Republic, Vera moved to Ireland in 2007. Brought by a pure desire for a life change, this has been a journey of personal discovery which resulted in pursuing an artistic career. In this very sense she is proud to consider herself an Irish artist.

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Based in Dublin, Vera has also been resident in Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny. In 2021 she completed an MA in Art and Research Collaboration at the Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Dún Laoghaire. In 2015 she graduated from the same Institute with a BA (Hons) in Photography.

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She is a professional member of Visual Artists Ireland and one of the current annual studio residency awardees at The Dean Art Studios.

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For details refer to artist CV page.​