People

Dr Michael Mulvihill

Currently Co Investigator for AHRC funded project 'Turning Fylingdales Inside Out: making practice visible at the UK’s ballistic missile early warning and space monitoring station.' 2020-2023

I have recently completed PhD research through the AHRC Northern Bridge Doctoral Training Partnership (AHRC NBDTP), producing art work that makes visible the way nuclear weapons have influenced and structure the way we experience our social and cultural environment. This working is being realized through an artist residency at RAF Fylingdales, a Ballistic Missile Early Warning Station operating under the umbrella of the USAF 21st Space Wing, responsible for missile warning and space tracking. As a part of my doctoral training I spent six months with English Heritage on work placement as Assistant Curator of their Cold War collections, which is composed of materialitiesfrom the UK governments preparation for nuclear war between 1946 and 1992. Both the doctoral research and student placement lead to the role of Associate Producer on A British Guide to the End of the World (2019) an Erica Starling production for BBC Four Arena series, directed by BAFTA winner Dan Vernon, which emerged from my research with RAF Fylingdales and English Heritage.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000b1gn/arena-a-british-guide-to-the-end-of-the-world

Prior to this research I held a Leverhulme Artist in Residence with the Military War and Security Research Group in the School of Geography Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University. This work resulted in an exhibition called Standby for the New Stone Age (2015) that intervened amongst the artefacts at English Heritage’s York Group 20 ROC HQ museum to mark the 70th Anniversary of Operation Trinity, the first nuclear detonation.  Additionally I have recently shown work in solo exhibitions A Mid-Century Modern (2015, Berwick Gymnasium Gallery), The Means and the Instruments (2015, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland) and I featured in the group show They use to call it the Moon (2014, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead). I took part in the 4th Ghetto Biennale: Kreyol, Vodou, and the Lakou: Forms of Resistance (2015) in Port-au-Prince, Haiti with a project called Charcoal. I am represented by VANE Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne who have recently shown my work in the group exhibitions Vicennial (2017, Vane Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne), Seeing a Who (2016, with Art Helix, Brooklyn, New York) and The Karman Line (2016, with Object A, Manchester).