Patrick Jolley

Patrick “Paddy” Jolley (1964 – 2012) was an Irish photographer and filmmaker from County Down, Northern Ireland.

At fifteen he moved with his family to the village of Dunmore East in County Waterford. In 1989 he graduated with a BA in Printmaking from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. Following this he lived and worked in London and New York, but it was in Prague where he moved with the artist Inger Lise Hansen, that he became increasingly preoccupied with photography. In 1994, he was awarded a scholarship for the MFA photography programme at the School of Visual Arts in New York which propelled him to begin experimenting with film.

He returned to Ireland in 1996, but continued to travel, mostly in Eastern Europe. In 1998 he took part in the residency programme at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, followed by a residency in New York as part of MoMA PS1’s International Studio Programme, which saw the beginning of an extended collaboration with the film-maker Reynold Reynolds. Their first short film ‘Seven Days ‘Til Sunday’ (1998) won him Best New Director at the Cork Film Festival, and was screened at London’s Tate Modern. Their next project, ‘The Drowning Room’ (2000), was screened at the Sundance Film Festival, and is in several important collections including the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.). The film installation ‘Burn’ (2002) was included in the 3rd Berlin Biennale (2004) and is part of the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Jolley left America for Berlin following the changes brought about by 9/11 but returned to New York to make one final film — ‘Sugar’ — with Reynolds in 2005. There was also one other collaborative film — ‘Here After’ —made in Dublin in 2004 with the artists Inger Lise Hansen and Rebecca Trost, which is part of the collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art.

Jolley then returned to Ireland where he made nine solo films in eight years. His film, ‘The Door Ajar’ (2011), a surreal visualisation of Antonin Artaud’s traumatic visit to Ireland, departed from his usual format of non-verbal shorts. It was exhibited at Dublin Contemporary 2011.

Jolley died suddenly in January 2012.