Dougal McKenzie

A co-director in the first years of the Belfast artist-run organisation Catalyst Arts, Dougal McKenzie went on to become a Lecturer in Painting at Limerick School of Art and Design from 1997 to 2003. He returned to work in Belfast as a member of Queen Street Studios from 2004, and in 2005 was a recipient of an Arts Council of Northern Ireland Major Individual Award. In 2007 he curated The Double Image, one of the Golden Thread Gallery’s series of Collective Histories of Northern Irish Art exhibitions. He was Chair of the board at Queen Street Studios/ QSS at Bedford Street from 2011 to 2014, helping in the organisation’s transition to new premises during this time. He continued to be a studio member at QSS Bedford Street, before moving to Orchid/ FlaxArt Studios in 2016. He joined Paragon Studios in Belfast in 2018. He exhibits nationally and internationally; most notably a prize winner at the Liverpool John Moores Contemporary Painting Exhibition in 2004, the John Moores Retrospective in Seongnam, South Korea in 2010, and an exhibitor again at the John Moores 2012 Prize. In 2014 he was one of two Northern Irish artists selected for the inaugural MAC International exhibition at the Metropolitan Arts Centre in Belfast, where he also held a major solo exhibition entitled A Dream and an Argument in 2017. He has been an external examiner to the BA Fine Art course at Sligo Institute of Technology, and is currently a co-director of the BA (Hons) Fine Art course at Belfast School of Art. He is also currently a programming committee member at the F.E. McWilliam Gallery and Studio in Banbridge, Northern Ireland, and since November 2018 a Board member at PS2 Gallery and Studios in Belfast.  His research interests revolve around the relationships of contemporary painting practice to subjects of narrative theory, historiography and the image.