Introducing our Emerging Exchange artists (Part 1).
- CEX
- Jul 3
- 2 min read
Thanks to financial support from Belfast City Council via the Artist Studios Organisational Grant 2024/25 Creative Exchange secured additional temporary studio spaces in Portview for early career artists. We’ve been delighted to welcome 6 new temporary members to our studio group earlier this year within the Emerging Exchange programme: first up, let’s meet the 3 occupants of unit A205 - Isabel Duffy, Nichola Irvine & Emma Quinn
Isabel Duffy is a Belfast based visual artist from Margate. Her work is centered around experiments in collage and printmaking inspired by Dada and Surrealist practices of automatism and detournement exploring themes of home, identity, dreams and memory. Isabel founded the Belfast artist collective Cotyledon - which organises group shows, art markets and regularly shares her love and joy of collage in monthly collaborative collage clubs.
Nichola Irvine is an illustrator and painter who graduated in Graphic Design and Illustration at Ulster University in 2020 and has been running her business full-time since. Her work artwork focuses on landscapes around Ireland often paired with inspiring quotes to create art that uplifts and inspires. She is often inspired by words drawn from her journals, songs, books, or even TV shows. Her main focus is to create artwork that heals - and if it brings joy and comfort to others, that is a welcome bonus.
Emma Quinn works within an undisciplinary, expansive artistic and curatorial practice. As a former sociology graduate, her work assumes a top-down approach, exploring sociological and philosophical theories through conceptualisation, collaboration, material and object. Emma has gravitated towards researching and contributing to artist-led spaces, projects and learning outside of traditional systems. She is a current co-director at Catalyst Arts, and was recently awarded the Backwater Artist Group Emerging Curator Award, 2026.
The idea behind Emerging Exchange was to pilot ways to scale up and expand our capacity with a view to developing long-term, purpose built artist studios on site in the coming years.
These spaces were aimed specifically for artists who are in the early stages of their career and who have had limited or no access to a studio space previously. Following the ethos in our main unit, these are shared spaces so artists can benefit from peer-support and collaboration as they develop their work. We are really excited about the fresh connections, energy and experiences our new members will bring to the Creative Exchange Studio group.
Introduction to the remaining 3 artists to follow shortly!
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