Conor Kelly (born Cork, Ireland 1980) is an Irish artist currently living and working in Glasgow. He graduated from BA Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Ulster in Belfast in 2002 and completed an MFA at the Glasgow School of Art in 2008. Recent exhibitions include 'Turn It On Again', SWG3 Projects as part of Glasgow International 2010; 'Open West 2010', Summerfield Gallery, Cheltenham, 2010; 'The Revolutionary Haircut', Glasgow Project Room, 2009(solo); 'Posthumous Hummus', A.Vermin, Glasgow, 2009; 'Arts Council of Northern Ireland - Recent Acquisitions', The Braid Mid-Antrim Museum, Ballymena NI, 2009 and 'And So It Goes', Artnews Projects, Berlin. In 2009 he was artist-in-residence at Curfew Tower, Cushendall NI in association with Void Gallery, Derry and was the recipient a Culture & Sport Glasgow Visual Arts Grant.
�One of the primary concerns within my practise remains the continuing question of the art object as historiographical device. Owning up to a corrupted authorship within this branch of knowledge, my practise attempts to unravel certain dominant representational systems. The proxy forms and registers within my work attempt to stage their own history simulation. Intuiting responses from the paintings, a dialogue is encouraged that vacillates between a sense of the didactic and the absurd.�
