Bio
Jennifer Trouton is an Irish artist whose practice incorporates paint, embroidery, wallpaper, textiles and artefacts . Formally her work appropriates the tropes of traditional still life painting, a genre that was traditionally associated with female artists due to their sex barring them from acquiring the necessary anatomical knowledge to paint ‘high genre’ works of portraiture, history or religion. Through her charting of spaces, objects and experiences Trouton creates contemporary coded dramas that subtly express ideas around gender, class and identity within Irish history. Her still life’s combines an interest in the mythological and historical with the personal stories and meta-narratives of women. While her work is rooted in Ireland, there is a thematic universality to the subjects that intersects with women’s histories globally. Always more than they appear, her meticulously rendered depictions of everyday materials gently reveal symbolic maps narrating the history of women via the objects that bear witness to their lived experience.
Since graduating from Ulster University in the mid-nineties, Trouton’s work has been extensively exhibited both nationally and internationally. These include The Katzen Gallery, Washington DC, The Guayasamin Gallery, Cuba the Drawing Centre, New York and the Fanzoug Museum, Suzhou, China. Throughout her career, Trouton’s work has garnered numerous awards, including the Golden Fleece Award, the Clare Morris Open, the RHA Keating/McLaughlin Award, the RUA Tyrone Guthrie Residency Award, and in 2020 the RUA Watercolour Prize. In 2007, Trouton was a finalist for the AIB Artist of Promise Award. In 2022 she received the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s highest accolade, the Major Individual Artist Award. She has also been awarded residencies in New York, Los Angeles, China, Canada, and Ireland.
Trouton’s work is held in numerous public and private collections including the Office of Public Works, Arts Council of Ireland, Irish State Collection at the Crawford, ESB Ireland, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Queen’s University Belfast, Ulster University, NI Department of Finance & Personnel, HSC Trust, Allianz Insurance, XL Insurance and David Roberts Foundation London.