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Dr. Michael Casey
Internationally acclaimed visual practitioner, cultural entrepreneur and critical commentator.

Dr. Michael Casey is an internationally acclaimed visual practitioner (Astro Artist), cultural entrepreneur and critical commentator.  

In his capacity as a cultural entrepreneur, Dr. Casey’s interests are many and varied: an active board member of the British and Irish Trading Alliance (BITA), LiR Media.tv (LMtv) and the Irish Lebanese Cultural Foundation (ILCF). Acknowledging his personal friendship and admiration for Enzio Siilasvuo and William O’Callaghan, both of whom served as senior generals of the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL), Dr. Casey has, on behalf of the ILCF, organised various state receptions at the Mansion House, Dublin and City Hall, Cork. He reminds us that, “Since 1978, over thirty six thousand Irish troops have served on peace keeping missions in Lebanon, the only Christian country in the Middle East.” 

Dr. Michael Casey (Fellow/Professor of the Irish State), His Excellency, Mr. Michael D. Higgins (President of Ireland) and Mr. Paul Whitnell (President of the British & Irish Trading Alliance). They were in attendance at a state reception at Áras an Úchtaráin to celebrate the achievement of the Tipperary International Peace Convention. 

In 2019, Casey was appointed Peace and Cultural Ambassador for the Tipperary International Peace Convention which awards the Tipperary International Peace Award, Ireland’s equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize. 

Over the years Casey has served on various academic boards and charitable committees in Ireland, the United Kingdom and Scandinavia; and, recently, one of his art works, through the British and Irish Trading Alliance’s programme on Education, Research, Innovation and Culture (ERIC), was publically exhibited and auctioned at the Savoy Hotel, London for in excess of £7,000. The Chairman (Vince Dignam) and President (Paul Whitnell) of B.I.T.A., presented the proceeds to the Irish Centre in London, founded in 1955 as a charity to relieve and combat poverty, distress, financial hardship and sickness for Irish citizens living in London.  

Since the early 1980s, Casey has studied and presented lectures/seminars/workshops at various academic institutions in Ireland (Cork, Belfast and Dublin), the United Kingdom (London, Oxford and Cambridge), and the United States (Boston and New York). As a Fellow/Professor of the Irish State he has also participated in research projects on continental Europe (Rome, Athens and Berlin), the Nordic Countries (Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm and Helsinki) and the Far East (Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo). 

Encouraged by prominent art academics and art luminaries, he completed a Ph.D at Helsinki University, Finland in 1999; and, according to Prof. Georg Henrik von Wright (a Finnish philosopher who succeeded Prof. Ludwig Wittgenstein at Cambridge in 1948), Casey was the first Irish/EU national to do so in the field of fine arts/cultural studies. At Helsinki University, an institution founded by Queen Christina of Sweden in 1640 (and, until 1919, formerly known as the Imperial Alexander University), Casey conducted a study - “The Post-Avant-Garde: Change, Influence and Patterns of Practice in Finnish Painting of the 1980s” - which concluded with much controversy and, more importantly, international critical acclaim. The three hundred and thirty three page treatise, including illustrations, was subsequently published by Helsinki University Press.

As a visual practitioner, cultural entrepreneur and critical commentator, Dr. Casey has represented the Universities of Oslo, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki, the National University of Ireland (NUI) and the Irish Research Council (IRC) at various international conferences. He has also curated over thirty fine art exhibitions and academic book launces and published well over one hundred articles/critiques in various newspapers, art and design magazines and academic journals. In addition to acknowledging a number of prestigious scholarships from the Irish and Finnish Ministries of Education and Foreign Affairs, Casey has also received bursaries from the Irish and Finnish Arts Councils, the Smurfit, Kone and Georg and Ella Ehrnrooth Foundations. In recognition of his contribution to Irish and International art/academia, Casey was awarded the title Government of Ireland Post-Doctoral Fellow (or Fellow/Professor of the Irish State) from the Irish Research Council, previously known as the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS), in 2002. 

As noted by the Italian Renaissance scholar Prof. Federico Zeri, it was during his posting to Villa Lante (the Finnish Institute in Rome and Finnish Embassy to the Holy See), that Dr. Casey began to redevelop a more interrogative approach to his interest in cosmic imagery and the universe as a whole. In the early 1990’s, Cardinal Angelo Sodana, then Papal Secretary of State (Prime Minister), was instrumental in this important development as he had introduced Dr. Casey to Fr. George Vincent Coyne, an American-born Jesuit and then director of the Vatican Observatory in Castel Gondolfo, Italy. In collaboration with Fr. Coyne at the Vatican’s observatory and the European Southern Observatory (ESO), he produced an important body of work entitled “The Whirlpool Galaxy Series” in the 1990’s. Founded in 1962, the ESO, a sixteen-nation international research organisation for ground based astronomy, is headquartered in Munich, Germany. Much to Dr. Casey’s delight Ireland joined in 2018. 

While virtually every child today grows up learning that the earth orbits the sun, this was not always so. As the art historian Sir John Pope Hennessy has observed: “Luckily Dr. Casey was not practicing as a cosmic artist in Rome during the Holy Inquisitions of 1633 as he would have been condemned by the Roman Catholic Church as a heretic and probably much more. The astronomer Galileo was severely prosecuted, indeed threatened with execution for his promotion of heliocentrism (a then perceived heresy of the Church), the astronomical model in which the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun at the centre of the solar System.”

In attempting to explain Dr. Casey’s critical discourse (work), he has received much international applause for the originality of his ideas, practically and conceptually. Fast forward, the following statement goes some way in explaining the rather complex nature of his cosmological interests: “No continents on the planet earth remain to be discovered. The exploratory challenge for scientists and visual practitioners, such as myself, has now broadened to that mysterious term - the cosmos. Humans have walked on the moon and some people now living may one day walk on Mars. Unmanned spacecraft/space probes such as the Hobble telescope have beamed back images of planets awash with hues of startling, visual intensity. The florescent-like configurations or cosmic environments challenge every aspect of our visual intelligence. My work attempts to understand how the cosmos developed its intricate complexity – how the first galaxies, stars and planets formed and how on at least one planet atoms assembled into creatures/humans able to ponder their origins. In terms of current theoretical and pictorial cosmology, I am looking forward to the forthcoming launch of the James Webb Space Telescope which will, in time, profoundly alter our perceptions of the universe as we know it. However challenging,” he says,” our quest to understand our place in nature must never be undermined or cease to exist.”

Dr. Casey’s paintings are not subtle or fleeting, but firm affirmations or compositions of strong, mesmerizing colours and bold, modulated brushstrokes. As Sir John Richardson (Picasso’s biographer) has remarked: “As an individual, such work requires a serious effort of the imagination. It is not easy.” All of the pigments that we experience on the surface of Casey’s works are made, at huge expense, from precious and semi-precious stones: ruby (Burma), emerald (Columbia), sapphire (Ceylon), amethyst (Brazil), lapis lazuli (Afghanistan), malachite (Russia), onyx (Yemen), cinnabar/Pompeii red (Italy), etc. Since the 1980’s, his works may be found in many prominent public, private and corporate collections and have been greatly admired and collected by individuals as diverse as: Prof. Stephen Hawking, Sir Patrick Moore, Dr. Tony Ryan, Sir Michael Smurfit, Gianni Agnelli, Pekka Herlin, Prof. Umberto Eco, Sir John Paul Getty II and the Sovereign Prince of Liechtenstein.

Space travel has always evoked mystery and wonder for Dr. Casey and his future projects are certainly impressive. There is, for instance current speculation that Sir Richard Branson is, among others space entrepreneurs in Europe and the USA, interested in partially sponsoring his proposal(s) to venture into outer space. Dr. Casey, a rather reserved and measured individual, has not, as yet, made any official comment or announcement; though, should such a pioneering expedition/project occur, the results will prove to be more than exhilarating for both artist and viewer alike.

Author: Dr. Mary Honan – Academic, Author, CEO LiR Media.tv (LMtv).

Contact email:  [email protected]

Moblie: 00353 833 30 6006

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