Gillian Lawler is an Irish artist, based in Dublin. She graduated with a BA in Fine Art Painting from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, in 2000, and has since had 17 solo exhibitions in Ireland, the UK, Croatia, Poland, Spain, Holland, Italy and the US.
She has won numerous awards, including the Hennessy Craig Scholarship and the Whytes Award at the RHA Annual Exhibition in 2007 and the Open Selection Exhibition Award at the Éigse Arts Festival in 2009. Other awards include an Arts Council Bursary Award (2022, 2020, 2009), Kildare Arts Services Award (2015, 2013, 2011, 2009), Culture Ireland grants (2021, 2018, 2017, 2011) and an invited studio residency at the RHA Gallery in 2009. She was shortlisted for the Beers Lambert Contemporary, Thames and Hudson publication, 100 Painters of Tomorrow in 2013, the Celeste International Art Prize in 2012 and won a Merit prize from the Golden Fleece Award in 2013. She also won the Graphic Studio Dublin Print Award in 2019 and the Parenting Residency Award at the Cow House Studios in 2022.
She is co-founder and a member of the artist group, Difference Engine, along with Mark Cullen, Jessica Foley, Wendy Judge and featuring Gordon Cheung. The group stages evolving serial exhibitions and is a model of autonomous artist curation. Each ‘manifestation’ of Difference Engine is based on an ongoing collaboration, a kind of ‘jamming’, between the artists. The results yield engaging experimental exhibitions, combining installation, video, painting, sculpture and writing.